Practical Ethics

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THE HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE

175
PRACTICAL ETHICS

EDITORS OF

THE HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE

PROFESSOR GILBERT MURRAY, O.M., D.C.L., F.B.A.

PROFESSOR G. N. CLARK, LL.D., F.B.A.

SIR HENRY TIZARD, K.G.B., F.R.S.

PRACTICAL
ETHICS

VISCOUNT SAMUEL

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO

First twblished in 1935 and reprinted in 1945

CONTENTS

CHAP. y PAGE

I. PRELIMINARY 7

II. ^ THE TEST OF RIGHT AND WRONG . 19

Iliy SELF AND OTHERS .... 43

IV., Is THERE FREE WILL ? . . .56

V. ^ DUTY AND INCLINATION ... 77

VI. ^ TRAINING AND HABIT ... 93

VII. Y ' RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES . . . 101

VIII. ^REWARDS AND PENALTIES . . 113

IX. j SOCIAL ETHICS . . . .129

X. SOME CURRENT QUESTIONS . -139

XI. THE NATION AND THE WORLD . .162

XII. MEN AND ANIMALS . . . .186

XIII. y CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION . . . 200

XIV. SUMMARY 217

NOTES AND REFERENCES . . . 239
NOTES ON BOOKS . . . -251
INDEX 253

The master said : "If the things be kept simple,
we shall seldom lose our way."

The Sayings of Confucius

CHAPTER I

PRELIMINARY

ETHICS seeks to answer two questions
What is to be regarded as right and as
wrong ? and Why should people do what
is right and not do what is wrong ? In
other words, the questions are What is
the content of morality ? and What is the
sanction for morality ?

It may be said that both these ques-
tions are within the province of Religion
and that Philosophy need not concern her-
self with them. But mankind is divided
among the adherents of many religions ;
while their teachings often coincide, often
also they diverge. If Moslems and Hin-
dus, Christians and Jews, Protestants and
Catholics, have different ideas of the right
and the wrong of a given case, what is
to be the outcome ? Are opposite lines

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

of conduct to be held to be right in the
same circumstances for different people ?
Or is there need of some further test, of
some other authority to give judgement ?
Even among adherents of the same creed,
when a conflict arises in some matter of
moment, each side will claim a religious
sanction for its view.

" The will of God prevails. No doubt, no doubt
Yet, in great contests, each side claims to act
In strict accordance with the will of God.
Both may, one must be wrong. x

Further, as civilization develops, many
of the rules of conduct in a country will
gradually change, although the same re-
ligion may be professed throughout. New
discoveries set new problems, and new
ideas bring about new customs. One age
will approve, and its religion will not
condemn, slavery, or duelling, or war,
while a later age may abhor them. Mor-
ality evolves. There can be no absolute
standard, ordained, unchanging.

1 For the sources of quotations see list of references,
p. 241.

8

PRELIMINARY

Again, there are some people almost
everywhere who do not accept the cur-
rent theological beliefs, or who, accepting
them formally, are not effectively influenced
by them in their daily lives. If mor-
ality rested upon those beliefs alone, these
people would have no basis for a moral
code or reason for moral conduct.

The religions clearly have a great part
to play in the realm of ethics. But, for
the reasons that have been given, Philo-
sophy cannot withdraw from that field, in
the conviction that it is fully covered, and
to the satisfaction of all mankind, by her
sister Religion.

Nor can Reason surrender the field in
favour of Intuition. There are some who
hold that there is a natural instinct im-
planted in human beings, of which con-
science is the spokesman, and which is an
infallible guide to right and wrong. They
say of morality, 'as St. Augustine said
of Time, " I know what it is when you
do not ask me/' If this theory wexe true,

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

mankind would be unanimous as to what
constitutes right conduct ; but experience
shows that this is very far from the case.
For one man's " intuition " contradicts
another man's "intuition." One person
will be a " conscientious objector " to
some law which his neighbour accepts as
obviously right. When this happens, what
guidance can we get from this principle ?
" When private emotion is regarded as the
test of truth," controversies arise which
are intractable.

Besides, since one age will unanimously
condemn actions which, in another age,
had been approved by most people's con-
sciences almost without question, how can
individual conscience be accepted as an
absolute standard, not open to challenge ?
History may turn her pages almost hap-
hazard and will show a hundred instances
of deeds done by excellent men from the
most conscientious motives which later
times have stigmatized as acts of cruel
persecution or ruthless barbarism. It is
recognized that conscience may err. But

PRELIMINARY

if conscience is itself the final authority,
who is to detect the error, and remedy it ?

Some of our primeval instincts may be
rather the survivals of animal impulses
which were better eradicated than authori-
tative guides to a true morality. Evolution
shows us how tendencies that have been in-
herited from millions of years of animal and
primitive human ancestry have been carried
forward into present society. " Mankind
is the animal at the head of the Primates,
and cannot escape habits of mind which
cling closely to habits of body." " Man's
habits change more rapidly than his in-
stincts. To-day we are born with instincts
appropriate to our palaeolithic ancestors,
and when we follow our instincts alone we
behave in a palaeolithic manner. "

We cannot find in intuition, conscience,
instinct, a reliable and universally accept-
able criterion of right and wrong.

In the eighteenth century the somewhat
similar doctrine of " Natural Rights "
played a considerable part, particularly in

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

the sphere of politics. It was asserted that
each man came into the world endowed,
not only with certain physical qualities,
but also with certain social rights. Laws
and customs must conform to those rights,
for they took priority. They set the
standards of right and wrong. In the
preamble to the American Declaration of
Independence of 1776 stood the famous
words, " We hold these truths to be self-
evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit
of Happiness." Thirteen years later the
French National Assembly declared, " The
end of all political associations is the pre-
servation of the natural and imprescriptible
rights of man ; and these rights are liberty,
property, security, and resistance of op-
pression." A truth, however, is not " self-
evident " unless it is such that no sane
man at any time will deny it. But these
principles have constantly been denied.
Indeed at the time that the Declaration

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PRELIMINARY

of Independence was promulgated, negro
slavery an obvious contradiction to its
terms was an established institution in
America, and it remained so for nearly a
century. In many parts of Europe in our
own day the claim to liberty has been chal-
lenged by philosophers and rejected by
dictators. The " natural and imprescrip-
tible right of property " is repudiated by a
hundred and twenty millions of people in
Russia. Assertion is not enough. It is
not enough to proclaim that this or that
is " self-evident." If someone says that,
for him, it is not self-evident, what then ?

In the nineteenth century many thought
that a firm basis for ethics had at last been
furnished by the newly discovered prin-
ciple of evolution. Again it was " Nature "
that was invoked. It had been found to
be her law that through ceaseless com-
petition, through a constant struggle for
existence, the fittest should survive and
become predominant. Harsh in its imme-
diate results, the process, it was said, was

PRACTICAL ETHICS

ultimately beneficent. In the long run
everywhere and automatically it brought
progress in the vegetable world, among
animal species, among the races and com-
munities of men. A true morality must
consist, therefore, in non-interference with
a fundamental and useful natural process.
Attempted interference must in any event
be futile. The doctrine was held to justify
in the social sphere an unlimited com-
petition between individuals, and in the
international sphere a ruthless competition
between states. It turned industrial op-
pression into a virtue and war into an
ordained instrument of human progress.
Closer thinking, however, soon showed
that all this was fallacious. In the first
place, as Huxley pointed out, " survival of
the fittest " does not mean survival of the
best ; it means no more than " the sur-
vival of those best fitted to cope with their
circumstances. " It has therefore no con-
nection with the moral problem at all.
Nor does the competition which exists
under natural conditions bear any resem-

H

PRELIMINARY

blance, either in methods or in results,
to the practice of organized war between
human communities. 1

Secondly, biology did not endorse the
claim that evolution guaranteed progress.
True that there is evident through the ages
a general upward trend ; but in particular
cases survival may be achieved through de-
generation ; some types even survive only
through becoming parasitical on others ;
while vast numbers, of course, fail to sur-
vive and become extinct. Among human
societies history gives no warrant for any
faith that progress is certain and auto-
matic. Periods of greatness in nations are
not regularly followed by periods of en-
hanced greatness, but often by decadence.
There is no straight line of excellence run-
ning parallel with the forward and upward
line of Time.

Thirdly, the evolutionary process does
not work only through competition and
strife, destruction and elimination. Co-
operation is equally an element* As Dar-

1 This point is further discussed in Chapter XI.

PRACTICAL ETHICS

win said, " the soft lining of the nest is its
instrument as well as the sharpening of
teeth and claws." At the dim beginning
of organic life stands the impulse of single
cells to combine in forming higher units.
Among its latest manifestations there is
conspicuous the habit of co-operation in
many species of insects, of birds, and of
mammals. The ants, bees, and wasps are
the best-known examples. Many animals
hunt together in packs, or form groups
for mutual defence. The bee that stands
at the entrance of the hive and whirrs its
wings to ventilate the passages ; the star-
ling that combines with others to drive off
a hawk ; the deer that takes position as
sentinel for the herd each of these is
moved by a primary impulse. It is an
impulse not less powerful, not less a part
of the evolutionary process, than that which
creates conflict, impelling colonies of ants
to attack one another, or birds to quarrel,
or stags to fight to the death. The im-
pulse of co-operation is implanted deep in
nature ; and in human nature with the

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PRELIMINARY

rest. The family, the tribe, spring from a
tendency which is innate. " Men/' said
Emerson, " as naturally make a state, or a
church, as caterpillars a web."

But if evolution gives no guarantee for
the production of the best ; if it gives no
assurance of continuous progress ; and if
it works not through one principle, com-
petition, but through co-operation as well,
balancing one against the other then
clearly it is useless to hope that we can
find there any guidance in our search for
standards of right and wrong.

There is yet another possible basis for
an ethical code, seldom advocated nowa-
days, but accepted in earlier times almost
universally the custom of the community.
" Originally," said Bergson, " custom is
the whole of morality, and as religion for-
bids departure from custom, morality is
co-extensive with religion." The idea is
enshrined, for example, in the ancient
Hindu laws of Manu : " the custom handed
down in regular succession since time im-

PRACTICAL ETHICS

memorial is called the conduct of virtuous
men/' But this involves the conclusion
that whatever are the laws and customs of
a particular society at a particular time
must be accepted in perpetuity. It would
compel us to believe that " cannibalism is
moral in a cannibal country. " Ethics be-
comes a stereotyped code, and no genera-
tion may ever seek a higher standard of
conduct than its predecessor. We need
hardly stay to examine more closely that
creed.

After so many negatives where shall we
find our positive ? If neither theology, nor
intuition, nor natural rights, nor the prin-
ciple of evolution, nor established custom,
can give full and satisfactory answers to
our questions, where shall we find the
answers ?

18

CHAPTER II

THE TEST OF RIGHT AND WRONG

IT will be convenient now to separate
our two problems, postponing till later the
question Why people should act rightly,
and considering first the question What
right action is.

Different schools of philosophy will give
different answers. I do not propose to
discuss here the various views, but would
offer for consideration a statement of the
one which I suggest is acceptable. It is
the doctrine that is founded upon the broad
principle that actions must be judged by
their consequences.

All attempts to find any a priori test
have, I believe, failed ; to continue them
would be unlikely to lead to any better out-
come. We must therefore proceed a pos-
teriori. Ideas, principles, laws, customs,

PRACTICAL ETHICS

deeds, are to be weighed by their results.
They are to be accounted right if they will
conduce to human welfare, and wrong if
they will not.

At once the question arises What is
meant by " welfare " ? And to this no
simple reply can be given ; for it is plain,
on looking around us, that welfare is not
a single thing, but consists in a combination
of many.

Moral philosophers have spent much
labour in attempting to define " The
Good " ; but no definition has yet been
proposed which commands general agree-
ment. May not the reason be that " the
Good " is merely " a fictional abstraction,"
that it corresponds to nothing actual in the
universe or in human society ?

So, also, theologians and philosophers
have discussed through the centuries what
is termed " the problem of Evil/' and
have found it insoluble. It may be sug-
gested that it is insoluble for the simple
reason that it does not exist. There is
no such thing as " a problem of Evil."

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THE TEST OF RIGHT AND WRONG

Evils there are in the world, obvious and
numerous enough evils of disease, acci-
dent, crime, vice ; evils springing from
wrong social systems or war, from fire or
storm, drought or flood. Each one has to
be confronted by such means as man
can command, and experience shows that
they may often be confronted with suc-
cess. The particular evils present their
particular problems ; but there is no one
Problem of Evil. That is merely an in-
vention of the sophisticated human in-
tellect. It is the same with " The Good,"
The question in what it consists cannot be
answered, if there is no such thing. You
cannot give a right answer to a wrong
question.

Philosophy will stand on a firm founda-
tion only if it is built, not on reasoning
based on reasoning, but on the facts of
the universe, of nature and of human life.
We see plainly enough in the world around
us that there are a number of different
things generally agreed to be good. Some

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

arise out of ouri physical characters. Health
rather than sickness, a meal when one
is hungry, a rest when one is tired, a
shelter from inclement weather that these
are " goods " is indeed self-evident, because
this at least no sane man would deny.
There are other satisfactions that are almost
universally felt, satisfactions derived from
sympathy and love and sense of duty.
There are pleasures, such as viewing
splendid scenery or beautiful sunsets.
There are the many gifts of art and of
science, the many achievements of a high
civilization. It is not possible to bring
all these into a single definition of " the
Good." Any definition wide enough to
be complete would be so vague as to be
useless. " Human welfare " can only be
defined, then, as the collective name for a
vast number of things, each one of which
in its turn is beneficial.

Other questions arise as soon as we
examine this doctrine of consequences.
Consequences of what kind and to whom ?

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THE TEST OF RIGHT AND WRONG

Are we to take account only of immediate
results, or should we include also indirect
effects upon habits, customs, laws ? Does
" human welfare " mean the welfare of the,
whole race, regardless of the interest of
the individual ? The answer to these ques-
tions must clearly be that the consequences
are the total consequences of the act
direct and indirect, immediate and remote,
to the agent and to others.

On this the objection will spring to mind
that, if each person on every occasion has
to consider afresh the ultimate and uni-
versal consequences of any particular action
that he may be contemplating, the result
would be moral chaos. The task would be
far beyond the powers of the deepest and
quickest thinker, much more of ordinary
men and women. But that, of course, is
not the position. Happily we do not " start
from scratch. " In the progress of the
centuries particular " goods " come to be
grouped together ; general rules of con-
duct are deduced ; creeds, codes, customs
develop. The lesson of ages of experience

PRACTICAL ETHICS

in countless households may be formulated
in a proverb ; the wisdom crystallized in it
is the popular guide in similar cases. A
great religious teacher or a great poet may
in a flash sum up the diffused, and per-
haps, unrealized, experience of generations.
His insight is recognized ; his teaching is
accepted ; his authority afterwards points
the way. Truthfulness, honesty, courage,
chastity, are ranked among the things that
are good and are counted as virtues ; their
opposites are bad and are vices. Habits
are formed in individuals by inherited
qualities, by training in childhood, by the
influence of the community. The normal
person in the ordinary circumstances of
daily life does not ponder and balance at
every moment what is right and what is
wrong, he acts by habit and as a matter of
course. But when the individual is not
normal, or has not been subjected to the
usual influences, or when marginal ques-
tions arise, or when there is reason to
think that the customary code is in error
and should be revised then there has to

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THE TEST OF RIGHT AND WRONG

be a valuation of " consequences " ; then
we must go back to more fundamental
principles ; then we must try to gauge
what will best promote the welfare, now
and in the long run, of the individuals
directly concerned and of the community.

Experience is the guide ; the test of trial
and error, discussion, example, are the
means. Ancestral experience, its lessons
transmitted as tendencies innate in later
generations ; experience of individuals, re-
membered by themselves, their families,
their neighbours ; the experience of nations,
recorded in history all come into the
process. The deliberate judgements of
individuals and the diffused common sense
of the society make the decision.

Let me give one or two examples of this
process as it has operated in practice.

If a man is insulted or injured, is it right
or is it wrong for him to challenge his
opponent to fight ? In earlier centuries the
answer would unhesitatingly be given that
it is right. It would have been regarded
as fundamental to human nature that a

PRACTICAL ETHICS

man who was wronged should vindicate
his honour or his interest by fighting.
To do otherwise would be condemned as
cowardice. An elaborate code of duelling
was developed in Europe, and, among large
classes of society, became as binding as a
law, or more binding. Then doubts began
to arise. As the result, perhaps, of religious
influences, or the spread of rationalism, or
the establishment of impartial law-courts
to which resort was more easy ; through
the realization that the more skilful duellist
usually won even though he was in the
wrong ; whatever the causes may have
been, thoughtful men here and there began
to condemn the duel as an institution. It
came to be a matter for discussion whether
it was right or was wrong. In course of
time more and more people formed the
opinion that, whatever might be the benefits
that might attach to duelling, the loss of
valuable lives, often on account of trifles,
far outweighed them. Duelling gradually
fell into disfavour ; at last public opinion
turned definitely against it ; as the best

26

THE TEST OF RIGHT AND WRONG

means to break the custom, laws were
passed for its suppression. Then experi-
ence, in the countries where such laws
had been enacted, showed that the direct
consequences were good and that indirect
consequences for harm had not followed ;
the standard of courage and honour was
not found to have been lowered. The
example was followed elsewhere, and where
it was not, the countries concerned were
regarded by the rest of mankind as having
fallen behind, in that particular, in the
forward march of civilization. Over the
greater part of the world the rightness or
wrongness of duelling ceased to be a ques-
tion for discussion. The argument that it
sprang from an ineradicable impulse in
human nature was quietly dropped when
the practice itself disappeared. Through
experience, discussion and the influence of
common sense, followed by changes in law
and in custom, the action of offering and
accepting challenges to duels has, almost
everywhere, been taken out of the category
of right and put into the category of wrong.

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

Sometimes a general change of stand-
point, sometimes a new discovery of
science, will alter the judgement of right
and wrong in a particular case. For
instance, in primitive times the killing of
insects wantonly would not have aroused
comment or question. In a humanitarian
age a different feeling prevails ; children
are taught not to do it ; " he would not
hurt a fly " becomes a form of praise for a
kindly disposition. But later still, science
having discovered that house-flies carry
disease, to destroy them becomes a moral
act. Sterne described Uncle Toby, when
he released out of the window the fly
which had buzzed about his nose all
dinner-time and which he had at last
caught, saying, with an amiable sentimen-
tality that has been quoted for nearly two
hundred years, "Go, poor devil, get thee
gone, why should I hurt thee ? This
world surely is wide enough to hold both
thee and me." But he did not know that
if that fly had happened to be a carrier of
the germs of typhoid fever, the action

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THE TEST OF RIGHT AND WRONG

would have been as wrong morally as open-
ing a tiger's cage in a crowded Zoological
Garden. In progressive countries the Pub-
lic Health Authorities, the schools, private
associations, make known the importance
of destroying the flies where they exist and
of getting rid of their breeding-places.
The results are found to be beneficial, in
that the prevalence of certain diseases is
lessened ; children and adults who would
have sickened, and perhaps died, remain
in health. A new item has been added to
the code of right conduct.

Numberless examples might be given.
By such processes as these, working through
long periods of time, the ways of life of men
living in communities have been evolved.

The consequences to be taken into
account are the total consequences of an
act, including the results to the agent him-
self. There is no reason to omit any parti-
cular group of consequences. This is an
essential point, especially when the effects
of the act influence character.

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

Experience shows that nothing conduces
more to welfare than that combination of
qualities which is called good character.
A " man of character " is one who has
adopted for himself certain rules of life,
which he may be relied upon to follow on
any occasion that may arise.

A man's character, such as it is at any
moment, is largely the outcome of his own
deeds in the past. Every act has its recoil
upon the agent. "It is right to say/ 1 as
Professor Bergson put it, " that what we do
depends on what we are ; but it is neces-
sary to add that we are, in some measure,
what we do, and that we are creating our-
selves continually/' And a man's deeds
are the direct outcome of his thoughts. A
thought also is an event ; it is, in a sense,
an act. There is truth in the saying,
4 * Your thoughts are making you."

In this connection the question of
Motives has to be considered. It is uni-
versally agreed that good motive is an
essential part of morality. There are some
who say that this rules out the principle of

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THE TEST OF RIGHT AND WRONG

consequences as the ultimate test in ethics,
since motive is one thing and results are
another. Let us examine this contention.

It is no doubt true that if an act, to-
gether with the motive that inspires it, is
taken in isolation, the motive would be the
starting-point. If the motive is bad the
man is acting, in that respect, immorally.
The consequences of the act may be good,
but nevertheless the motive is bad, and
the good consequences do not alter that
fact. Therefore, it may be said, the doc-
trine of consequences as the test of right-
ness does not apply in such cases, and
for that reason it must be rejected as
unsatisfactory.

That conclusion would certainly follow
in the conditions given ; it being as-
sumed that the act and its motive are to
be considered in isolation. But those are
not the conditions of actual life. Those
are only the conditions of the philosopher's
laboratory, so to speak. In actual life the
motive of any particular act is part of the
agent's character, and his character is the

3 1

PRACTICAL ETHICS

result of prior influences, which include
his own previous acts. The motive is no
doubt a starting-point in respect of the act
in question, but it is a culminating-point
when seen from the standpoint of the man's
ancestry, his environment and his previous
actions. So viewed and this is the only
view which corresponds with the real situa-
tion it becomes plain that motives also
come within the realm of consequences.

Moral philosophy has been much con-
cerned with this particular issue how far
an action is to be considered right if the
direct results are good but if the motive
for doing it is corrupt and dishonourable ;
or, conversely, if the results turn out to
be harmful although the act itself was well-
meant. Is the test of Tightness to be
objective, in relation to the visible results,
or subjective, in relation to the motives of
the doer ? There is no agreement among
philosophers on this point. Here again
may not the disagreement be due to f the
fact that the issue is not being fairly put ?

Suppose the case of a man who learns
3*

THE TEST OF RIGHT AND WRONG

that a murder is being planrted ; he gives
the information to the person threatened,
but only after he has successfully imposed
a condition that a substantial sum of money
shall be paid him as a reward. The action
in itself is clearly good, for unless murders
are prevented welfare will not be served ;
but the motive is bad, for it is the duty of
good citizens to join in preventing crime
independently of the prospect of personal
advantage. The philosopher in such a case
finds difficulty in answering the question
whether the act is right or wrong. But
the issue is not fairly stated in those terms.
There is not one question here but two
first, is it right to give information that
will prevent crime ? And, second, is it
right to insist upon a reward for so doing ?
The answer to the first is in the affirmative,
and to the second in the negative. If, in
all such cases, two separate issues are
confused together no sound answer is
possible.

Another aspect of the problem, often
considered by writers on ethics, is pre-
33 B

PRACTICAL ETHICS

sented by the' case of a man who takes all
possible pains to ensure that his action in
given circumstances is right ; through no
fault of his, the results turn out to be
definitely harmful ; was his conduct, in
doing what he did, right or wrong ? The
actual consequences did not " conduce to
welfare," yet no one would say that the
man was blameworthy. I think that the
true answer is that given by Professor
Moore in his book on Ethics in this Series
that the action was wrong. It seemed
at the time that it was right, but the results
showed that in fact it was wrong. Yet the
man would not be censured for what he
did if he had in fact taken all possible pre-
cautions.

In practical conditions, however, that is
seldom the case. When something goes
amiss the person at fault will often say,
" I did my best, and one cannot do more."
And that no doubt is true if, here again,
the event is considered in isolation. But
earlier factors cannot be excluded. It is
not enough for a man to do his best ; it

34

THE TEST OF RIGHT AND WRONG

is also necessary that he should have pre-
viously made every effort to ensure that his
best shall in fact be good. A general
makes certain dispositions of his troops,
based on the information at his command
and determined by his own experience and
training. If he is defeated in the battle,
he will claim that he has " done his best,"
and that he acted rightly in the circum-
stances as known to him. Yet a better
general, who had taken pains to secure
more reliable information and who had
made a more correct survey of the position,
might have won a victory.

It is hardly necessary to point out that
" consequences," in this connection, must
be events integrally related to the act itself.
Something which may chance to happen
after the act has been done, affecting in
some manner the persons concerned in it,
does not enter into the question of the
Tightness or wrongness of the act itself.
A station-master dispatches a train at the
usual time in the usual way ; on its journey
it meets with an accident, which the station-

35

PRACTICAL ETHICS

master could not possibly have foreseen.
It is true that, if for some reason he had
not sent off the train, the accident would
not have happened ; and it might be sug-
gested that the principle that actions must
be judged right or wrong according to
their results is thereby proved unsound.
But it cannot be seriously contended that
the accident was " the consequence of "
the station-master dispatching the train
on that day, just as he had dispatched it
on every other day. The accident was
the consequence of quite other events,
and the case put is not relevant to the
issue.

Before we pass on, there is another
criticism still to be considered. It is some-
times said that, if we confess ourselves
unable to find any single criterion by which
" goods " can be valued in comparison
with one another, we shall be putting them
all on the same level. What is noble or
holy or inspiring would be ranked with
what is physically satisfying ; they all con-

36

THE TEST OF RIGHT AND WRONG

duce to welfare in some fashion ; the prin-
ciple that things are good or bad according
to their consequences gives no reason
for preferring the higher goods to the
lower.

It is difficult to see the ground for
this objection. There may be a scale of
" goods," and some may be recognized as
in a higher category than others. Pre-
cisely the same process as enables us to say
that this is good and that is bad, enables
us also to say that this other is better and
that one is best of all.

There are indeed many cases in which
it makes no difference what the choice is ;
for example, a preference for one flavour
or one odour, for one kind of music or
one kind of scenery. Individual taste is
then the final arbiter and no question of
ethics arises. But where different results
do follow from the nature of the choice,
ethics cannot allow the subjective element
to be conclusive. It must find a test which
will decide, not only what is good or bad,
but also what is better and best. The

37

PRACTICAL ETHICS

results to be expected must be weighed.
Ethics cannot go beyond that general
principle. It would be putting forward
pretensions that would not stand the test
of practical application if it claimed that it
could ever provide a scale-balance which
would automatically decide in any given
case what is good or bad, or which is the
greater good or the lesser.

The Utilitarian School endeavoured to
provide such a balance. They accepted
the primary principle that " ethical pre-
cepts must be judged in the light of the
consequences which result from the prac-
tice of them." But in the endeavour to
obtain precision, Bentham and the thinkers
who followed him adopted also two second-
ary principles : first, that the consequences
to be taken into account had relation only
to " happiness " ; second, that happiness
was to be measured by the attainment of
" pleasure " and the avoidance of " pain."
Bentham himself held, further, that there
could be drawn up a sort of calculus of
pleasures and pains ; that these could be

38

THE TEST OF RIGHT AND WRONG

divided, so to speak, into lots, be multiplied
by the number of people affected, and the
totals balanced against one another ; the
result would show, almost mathematically,
which of two courses would produce the
greatest happiness of the greatest number
and ought therefore to be preferred.

In spite of the brilliant qualities of
the Utilitarian group their teaching
has not survived. It was seen that the
words " utility," " happiness," " pleasure,"
" pain," could only be accepted as the
basis for a moral code if they included
very many things which the words did not
usually imply. The martyr who rightly
went to the stake rather than deny his
faith might be said, in a sense, to do so
for a useful purpose, to be promoting his
own happiness, and to find in his act
pleasure rather than pain ; but the mean-
ing of the words is being stretched so
wide that the result is merely confusing.
" Utility " does not ordinarily connote
various things which are highly to be de-
sired beauty, for example. It is of course

39

PRACTICAL ETHICS

possible to say, with Victor Hugo, " the
beautiful is as useful as the useful " ; but
that would be to empty both words of
their distinctive meanings, and would leave
us with no more guidance than if we had
used neither.

This criticism has been regarded almost
universally as conclusive ; but it does not
touch the primary principle from which
the Benthamites had started. It was effec-
tive against their methods of applying that
principle, but not against the principle it-
self. We may start again from the same
point that things are good or bad accord-
ing to their total consequences but may
follow afterwards a different course. We
may turn aside from the too narrow paths
of Utility, Happiness, Pleasure and Pain
and enter the open country.

It is true that when we do that we have
to take the responsibility of finding our
own way. Philosophy can tell us the des-
tination, and the points of the compass,
and the experiences of other travellers ;

40

THE TEST OF RIGHT AND WRONG

we have to discover for ourselves the roads
that are practicable. But is not that the
province of ordinary life rather than of
philosophy ? To decide from day to day
and from generation to generation what
particular aims are good, and then to act
so as best to attain them the science and
art of living are just that and nothing else.
The general guidance which philosophic
thought can give was summed up long
ago by the Buddha. It is recorded that
on a certain occasion some inhabitants of
Kalama came to him and said : " Many
Brahmins and ascetics come to us and pro-
pound their different systems. This raises
doubts in us and we do not know what
to believe/' Thereupon the Buddha said :
' ' It is proper and very natural that doubts
should arise in you ; blind belief is to be
rejected. Do not judge by hearsay, nor
by tradition, nor on mere assertion, nor on
the authority of so-called sacred writings,
nor by logical deductions, nor by method-
ical derivation, nor by the mere evidence
of the senses, nor by long-accustomed

41

PRACTICAL ETHICS

opinions and conceptions ; do not judge
according to appearances, nor believe any-
thing because an ascetic or teacher has
said it. But when you yourselves per-
ceive : ' these things are wrong, these
things are objectionable, these things when
done produce woe and suffering for us and
others/ then reject them. But when you
perceive : ' these things are right, these
things are unobjectionable, these things
when done produce weal and happiness
for us and others/ then adopt them and
act accordingly."

CHAPTER III

SELF AND OTHERS

THE proposition which I would offer in
this chapter is that welfare is promoted
both by self-interest and by social interest,
each in its proper measure ; a sound sys-
tem of ethics will approve both egoism
and altruism, and its practical task is to
find the right balance between them.

There are, however, many writers on
moral philosophy who take a different view.
Kant held that an action only acquires real
moral worth when it is done from duty
and not from inclination. In our own day
Professor Hobhouse speaks of self-interest
as " something essentially non-moral."
Westermarck says much the same. And
Mr. Walter Lippmann says : "It can
be shown, I think, that those qualities
which civilized men . . . have agreed

43

PRACTICAL ETHICS

to call virtues, have disinterestedness
as their inner principle. ... It is not
accounted a virtue if a man eats when
he is hungry or goes to bed when he is
ill."

This view, I suggest, is not to be
accepted. There are duties which are not
the less duties because it is to our interest
to perform them. A sound popular in-
stinct says, " a man has duties to himself."
If a hungry man perversely refused to eat,
or a sick man to go to bed, we should
tell him, and rightly, that it was his duty
to do so. " No one," says Spinoza, " can
desire to be happy, to act well and live
well, who does not at the same time
desire to be, to act and to live, that
is to say, actually to exist. No virtue
can be conceived prior to this, the en-
deavour, namely, after self-preservation."
And Herbert Spencer, asserting that the
preservation of health is a duty, declares
that " there is such a thing as physical
morality."

It is obvious that there are forms of
44

SELF AND OTHERS

self-interest which are anti-social, but there
are others which are not. By seeking his
own interest, as embodied in his own
health, education, efficiency, in the realiza-
tion of full personality the individual is
serving the community as well. As John
Stuart Mill expressed it : " In proportion
to the development of his individuality,
each person becomes more valuable to
himself, and is therefore capable of being
more valuable to others. There is a greater
fulness of life about his own existence, and
when there is more life in the units there
is more in the mass which is composed of
them." Parents do not help their children
best by sacrificing altogether their own
standards of living in the hope of raising
theirs. A generation which sought to pro-
mote the welfare of the next generation
by never caring for its own, would fail
in its aim. The people of the nine-
teenth century would have been of little
service to the twentieth if they had
not developed their own civilization for
their own sakes. Each age is momentous

45

PRACTICAL ETHICS

to itself, and each individual to himself
also.

Further, the doctrine that my duty is
to be found in seeking only my neighbour's
welfare, and not my own, is irrational.
The same rule must apply to my neigh-
bour also ; he has a duty to promote my
welfare. But why should he do so, unless
my welfare is a good thing in itself ? And
if it is, have not I too the duty to pro-
mote it ?

The command of the Old Testament
" Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, "
with its endorsement in the New Testa-
ment " Whatsoever ye would that men
should do to you do ye even so to them,"
has been accepted by the greater part of
civilized mankind as the highest of ethical
precepts ; but that precept does not ex-
clude a legitimate care for one's own rights
and interests. It does not say thou shalt
care for thy neighbour and not for thyself.
It says precisely the opposite ; it takes
love for oneself, and what one would wish
others to do for one's own benefit, as the

46

SELF AND OTHERS

very standard of duty to the others. Self-
interest^ in fact, is made the measure of
altruism.

True that religious teachers and moral-
ists of all schools have always emphasized
the " other-regarding virtues " rather than
the " self-regarding virtues." Men have
so strong a natural tendency to seek what-
ever their own immediate interest requires
that it is the other part of their duties
which most needs support from outside.
It is not necessary to educate people to
do what they already wish to do because
they expect to gain a direct advantage by
it ; what is necessary is to teach them that
they ought sometimes to do things which
they do not wish to do, and from which
they will gain no immediate advantage.
None the less there are many occasions
on which an action which one wishes to
take, and which will bring a direct benefit,
is in fact a good action, and one that ought
to be taken. Ethics is concerned with
right conduct not one part of right con-
duct but the whole of it, and must not

47

PRACTICAL ETHICS

take into account only that part of con-
duct which needs the support of moral
propaganda. It is amusing, but untrue,
to say, " La morale, c'est faire les choses
ennuyeuses."

It is clear, however, that this is only part
of the picture. " Man/' as Aristotle said,
" is a social animal." We can hardly en-
visage a human individual at all except
in relation to a society. The man is de-
pendent upon the community physically,
because it nurtures him, and because it
may expose him to disease or save him
from it ; mentally, because it gives him
access to knowledge ; economically, be-
cause of the division of labour. If social
relationships were absent " the life of man
would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish
and short." But a community cannot exist
unless its members are ready to accom-
modate themselves to one another, and to
subordinate, when necessary, personal in-
terest to the general interest. If each
pushed to the extreme his own advantage,

48

SELF AND OTHERS

the community would fall and the welfare
of everyone would perish with it.

The view prevailed widely in the nine-
teenth century that a regard for self-interest
alone would in practice work out favour-
ably to social interest ; but experience
showed that that was not so. As Professor
Whitehead says, " the mere doctrines of
freedom, individualism, and competition,
had produced a resurgence of something
very like industrial slavery at the base
of society." Generations grew up, illiter-
ate, overworked, poverty-stricken. Towns
grew up, ugly and mean, inconvenient and
unhealthy. Life tended to become more
and more materialized and commercialized.
Those who ranked economic values above
intellectual or spiritual, meeting no check in
any quarter, became predominant. Egoism
did not in fact work out as altruism. Wel-
fare in the total was not being served. The
conclusion became clear that, if you could
not shut out self-interest, so also you could
not leave it unguided and uncontrolled.
Social interest must enter also, and the only

49

PRACTICAL ETHICS

question is how each may best serve the
other.

Let us consider one or two examples of
the inter-relation of egoism and altruism.

A man walking along the sea-shore sees
a child struggling in shallow water and in
danger of being drawn out by the tide ;
he can save the child's life at no greater
cost to himself than a wetting ; it is obvious
that it is his duty to do so. Egoism hardly
comes into the matter and altruism is pre-
dominant. But suppose that the child is
already some way out ; the passer-by is
an average swimmer but no more ; there
is some risk that he may himself be carried
out to sea ; self-interest pulls one way,
sympathy and humanity the other. There
would probably be a consensus of opinion
that it would be right for him to make
the attempt and to run the risk. Consider
now a third case ; a storm is raging ; a
crowd of people are watching a vessel with
sailors on board, which has been driven
on to the rocks ; no human being could

50

SELF AND OTHERS

possibly swim with a rope through the
breakers ; if one of the crowd, animated
by a complete disregard of self, were to
volunteer to attempt it, the judgement
should clearly be that, in the conditions
stated, his proposed action would be
wrong ; he would be merely sacrificing
yet another life ; his deed might be heroic
but would be irrational ; it would be the
duty of the bystanders to restrain him.
If, however, he persisted and they did not
stop him and he was drowned, as it was
clear that he would be, his action might
be admired as courageous but would be
condemned as morally wrong. Altruism
would have been carried too far.

Consider the exceptional case of a man
who has in him a capacity for leadership
or powers of original genius. It is his
duty to make his abilities known and to
win scope for his activities. For him,
self-realization rather than self-sacrifice is
to be counted virtuous. The spirit ex-
pressed by Blake or Carlyle is more proper
in his case than a spirit of renunciation.

PRACTICAL ETHICS

Egoism not indeed uncontrolled, not ex-
pressing itself in ways that are injurious
to society may be the quality best
justified in his case, may best conduce to
the welfare of a community which
perhaps is starved for genius and for
leadership.

In politics issues are continually arising
as to the extent to which the individual
citizens may rightly be called upon to
sacrifice their personal welfare to what is
regarded as the welfare of the community.
Not every call is to be accepted. History
is full of examples of bad rulers summon-
ing their subjects to make sacrifices for
purposes that are seen afterwards to have
been unnecessary or harmful ; the citizens
would have rendered the best service if
they had refused, had insisted instead
upon a change of policy, and perhaps a
change of rulers. And not every call is
to be rejected, for that, as has been said,
would mean the dissolution of society.
It is quite clear that individual cases must
be judged upon their merits, and politics

5*

SELF AND OTHERS

largely consists in forming and applying
such judgements.

It is sometimes asked whether the object
to be pursued is the perfection of the in-
dividual or the perfection of the society.
But that is an idle question ; just as it
would be idle to ask whether it is the bulb
or the soil which produces the flower. It
is the bulb in the soil, and it is obviously
the perfection of the individual in the
society which is the object to be pursued.

Yet in the final analysis it is the in-
dividual alone that is in question ; we seek
to perfect society for his sake and not the
other way about. " Society " is indeed no
more than a word which conveniently ex-
presses the notion of persons organized
together in a certain way for common
purposes. Without that organization they
themselves, it is true, would be different
and inferior ; but apart from the persons
the society does not exist. It is not pos-
sible here to pursue a subject which opens
up a wide field of philosophical controversy.
I would only express the conviction that

53

PRACTICAL ETHICS

the idea that " Society " or " the State "
is a reality, and is entitled to unlimited
devotion for its own sake, is merely the pro-
duct of the imagination of metaphysicians
running loose in a vacuum, and has no
true relation to the actual life of men
living in communities. It is an idea, more-
over, which, so far as it has won accept-
ance, has done, and is doing, great harm.
Nor does the term " Society " as used in
moral philosophy correspond with the term
" State " as used in politics. The social
factor may be a different thing in different
applications. It may be, for example, the
welfare or reputation of a family, as against
the immediate interest of one member of
it ; or it may be the joint interest of some
corporate body, such as a trade union, or
a manufacturers' association ; or it may in
fact be the national interest, with which
it is often assumed to be identified ; or
it may pass beyond that and be the in-
terest of the human race as a whole. In
the modern world that is often the case,
and when we speak of social welfare we may

54

SELF AND OTHERS

often mean nothing less than the welfare
of all mankind.

The conclusion is, then, that out of the
mutual inter-action of self-interest and
social interest comes the moral code.
There are poets who have clearly dis-
cerned this. Robert Bridges' great work
The Testament of Beauty is divided
into three parts, which he entitles " Self-
hood/' " Breed " and " Ethick." " Self-
hood " is the individual factor, " Breed "
is the social factor, and the theme of
the poem is that they combine to create
" Ethick," which is morality. And Pope
wrote in the Essay on Man :

So two consistent motions act l the Soul ;
And one regards Itself, and one the Whole.
Thus God and Nature link'd the general frame,
And bade Self-love and Social be the same.

1 Actuate.

55

CHAPTER IV

IS THERE FREE WILL?

WE can now pass on from our first
question, In what does right and wrong
consist ? and examine the second ques-
tion, Why should men prefer the one to
the other ? But when we get to close
quarters with it we shall soon find our-
selves in difficulties unless we had already
dealt with one preliminary point. We are
obliged first to consider whether men really
have a moral responsibility for their acts
at all. May not everything that they do
be determined by prior causes ? If so,
is any real choice open between right and
wrong ? Is conduct of any kind a matter
for praise or blame ? We cannot escape
the problem, which has vexed the mind of
man all through the centuries, of Deter-
minism and Free Will.

56

IS THERE FREE WILL ?

This is not a mere abstract philosophical
puzzle which may be the subject of an
interesting argument in the study. It is a
living, practical issue. It faces the legis-
lator, the lawyer, the ordinary citizen, every
hour. For example, if a man commits a
crime and it is found that he has lived
from birth in bad surroundings, it seems
natural to say, " That man has not had
a chance ; he has never had a parent's
control or proper education or a helping-
hand ; he has never had regular employ*
ment or a settled home ; how could it
be expected that he would turn out other
than he has done ? Society is more to
blame than he is. To punish him is not
true justice. " The criminal himself may
advance that plea. In 1930 the House of
Commons appointed a Select Committee
to inquire into the question of Capital
Punishment ; one of the witnesses before
the Committee had been a Commissioner
of Prisons in Scotland ; in the course of his
evidence he said : " Taking some of the
young prisoners I have had talks with,

57

PRACTICAL ETHICS

they persistently defend their attitude. . . .
They tell you it is no use talking to them
about reform. They say : c I didn't make
myself ; I didn't ask to be brought into
the world/ and that kind of thing. . . .
They think they are talking philosophy
when they are talking nonsense. That is
a common thing outside prison walls as
well as in. They are determinists of a
kind. A man says : ' Well I can't help it :
that's the way I'm made. I couldn't help
doing it,' and that sort of thing." The
witness added : "I say to them : ' I will
be giving you three days bread and water.
That's the way I'm made.' And they can
see that. It is a poor way of answering,
but when he gets an answer like that he
can understand it."

Is there a better answer ? Or must
it be admitted that there is not any
rational reply to the defence made by the
criminal ? The same kind of problem,
though perhaps not so clear-cut, presents
itself constantly in all the relations of
daily life.

58

IS THERE FREE WILL ?

Science, by establishing the Law of
Causality, laid the foundation for deter-
minism. Every event is preceded by earlier
events ; if they had been absent the later
event would not have occurred ; if they
had been different, the later event would
have been correspondingly different ; the
earlier stand to the later in the relation
of cause to effect. Further, there has been
established the Law of Uniformity in
nature ; the same causes will always pro-
duce the same effects.

It is true that there are at the present
time some physicists, of whom the lead-
ing representative in Great Britain is Sir
Arthur Eddington, who deny this uni-
formity. Basing themselves mainly upon
some hitherto unexplained facts in the
behaviour of electrons within the atom,
they declare that there is at work a " Prin-
ciple of Uncertainty " ; that chance reigns
at the heart of nature ; and, further, that
this has a bearing upon the question of
human free will. If there is no law,
says Sir Arthur Eddington, regulating the

59

PRACTICAL ETHICS

most elementary processes of nature, why
should we suppose that there is any law
regulating the highest and most compli-
cated processes ? But other physicists, of
at least equal authority, by no means accept
this proposition. Professor Einstein, the
originator of the Theory of Relativity ;
Professor Planck, the originator of the
Quantum Theory ; Lord Rutherford, the
pioneer in the discoveries of the structure
of the atom ; Sir Oliver Lodge and many
more, consider it either unsound or un-
proven. The layman has been given as
yet no sufficient reason to abandon the
principle of the uniformity in the sequence
of events in nature, a principle that has
been tested by innumerable experiments in
every field of science during centuries of
investigation, without a single exception
having been established until now.

If that be accepted as the starting-point
given by science, the question that arises
for philosophy is whether the human mind
and human conduct are to be regarded as
within " nature " ; whether the Law of

60

IS THERE FREE WILL ?

Causality and the Law of Uniformity apply
in that sphere as they apply elsewhere.
There is a strong prejudice against be-
lieving that they do. Yet it is difficult
I think it is impossible to find any rational
support for a negative view. The universe
includes mind and nature includes man.
You cannot divide the universe or nature
into two parts, saying that in one part
everything that happens is the outcome of
causes and under the rule of law, and that
in the other part events may happen which
are uncaused, spontaneous, autonomous,
arbitrary. He would be a rash man who
would venture to say where the boundary
would lie between them.

Nevertheless, the great majority of man-
kind do undoubtedly believe that, in some
mysterious, and indeed inexplicable, fashion
the human will is free, in the sense that
human actions are exempt from causation.
At the same time they do not act upon
that belief. Take again the example of
crime. Experience shows us that if a
nation gives to its children a good general

61

PRACTICAL ETHICS

education and a sound moral training, and
secures to its adults a regular livelihood
in comfortable circumstances, fewer in-
dividuals in that nation will choose to com-
mit crimes than if the conditions were
otherwise. A wise society sets to work
to establish such conditions so far as prac-
ticable, with the expectation that conduct
will in fact prove itself amenable to causes
and that crime will diminish. So with
regard to social effort in general. If we
really believed that every human action
was the outcome of an undetermined
choice, uninfluenced by prior causes, what
would be the use of the training of infants,
of school education, of religious discipline,
of the inculcation of good habits of any
kind ? Why should we attach importance
to eugenics, or to any measures of social
reform ? With it all, on this theory, each
individual would act in the same way as
without it.

And yet ...

We feel sure that we do in fact choose
freely between this and that from hour to

62

IS THERE FREE WILL ?

hour and from minute to minute. We feel
sure that we could, if we had wished, have
taken a course on any occasion different
from that which we did take. We cannot
doubt that there must be some answer to
the criminal who repudiates personal re-
sponsibility and claims to escape punish-
ment because he had acted from necessity,
We see that if such claims were once
admitted, the whole social system would
collapse. Common sense is with Dr. John-
son when he said, " Sir, we know the will
is free, and there's an end on't."

That is our problem. It seems as though
an irresistible argument Determinism
is meeting an immovable fact Free Will.
What is to happen ? Until we have
decided whether men, in any event, have
or have not the power to act rightly it is
useless to discuss for what reasons they
should act rightly.

If here again we treat in isolation the
act and the choice which precedes it, the
dilemma is indeed insoluble. If, as is

63

PRACTICAL ETHICS

usually done in this discussion, a section
is cut, so to speak, in the continuous flow
of events at a particular moment in time
when a choice is being made, and the
problem is supposed to originate as from
that moment, then we cannot expect to
arrive at a satisfactory result. But as we
saw when we were discussing " motives "
and " consequences " any such limitation
is artificial ; it is an arbitrary departure
from the facts of actual life. We are en-
titled for that reason to refuse to accept the
conditions in which the problem is usually
set. The choice which precedes the act is
not the real starting-point. We must go
farther back, and when we do that we may
find the way of escape from the dilemma.
A person chooses between this and that,
and when he does so his will is acting
freely. Let that be accepted. But what
is this Personality, what is this Will, that
choose and act ? They are themselves the
result of prior causes. You say, " I have
freedom of choice/' and that is quite true.
But what is the meaning of " I " ?

64

IS THERE FREE WILL ?

Geological causes have produced the
globe on which we live, and biological
causes the human race to which we be-
long ; we are bound to act as men, and
are not free to act as the insects, or the
birds, or the beasts of the forest and the
field. Historical causes have produced the
nation of which we are members, and have
endowed us with the characteristics of
that nation. Genealogical causes give each
of us our family characteristics, and will
tend to make us act in accordance with
them. Our environment, our education,
our wealth or our poverty, help to mould
us. Each human personality, then, is the
outcome of causes of thousands, millions
of causes, spreading out and stretching
back through time, beyond the range of
computation and even of imagination ;
crowding upon each other and inter-
mingling ; sometimes reinforcing one
another, sometimes in mutual opposition ;
some powerful, some weak ; some bene-
ficial, some harmful. What a man does
depends upon what he wills. What he

65 c

PRACTICAL ETHICS

wills depends upon what he is. What he
is depends upon these prior causes, infinite
in number.

But this is not to say that a personality
is a mere bundle of effects. It is some-
thing very different. The effects subsist,
but they have been fused into a new
entity. There is nothing there but the
product of a multitude of prior causes ;
yet that product has a unity of its own ; it
is a new " whole " ; it becomes, itself, a
cause of other effects. Viewing the matter
forward from the moment of choice and
looking into the future, we see the operation
of a free will ; but viewing it backward
from the moment of choice, and looking
into a limitless past, we see the operation
of causality. The present is both effect
and cause. It is the effect of all the past.
It is the cause of all the future.

In other words, my choice now is free,
but the " I " that chooses is the result
of past causes. My choice is the out-
come of my character, and my character
has been determined by those past causes.

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IS THERE FREE WILL ?

As Schopenhauer expressed it, " A man
can surely do what he wills to do, but he
cannot determine what he wills." That is
to say, the will which chooses is as much
the product of causes as anything else.

Are we then reduced to saying that
the freedom of the will is an illusion an
illusion from which we may not be able
to escape, but still an illusion ? I do not
think so. It is real for us, and in the
practical conditions of our daily lives.

Our bodies for us are solid flesh and
bone, and that is not illusion. Yet we
have learnt to know that they are in fact
made up of infinitesimal electric charges
revolving with inconceivable rapidity ;
they are as easily penetrable by X-rays
or by wireless rays as the " solid " glass
of a window is penetrable by rays of light.
When we sit down we know that we are
stationary, and that is really so for us.
Yet all the time we are travelling with
the earth through space a hundred times
faster than the speed of a rifle bullet.
So we conduct our lives on the basis that

67

PRACTICAL ETHICS

the will is free and so it is, relatively
to ourselves and to our conduct to one
another.

We are obliged in ordinary conditions
to treat each person as though he were, so
to speak, " a fresh start." When we meet
a friend in the street we do not stay to
analyse the causes which have made him
what he is. We say here is John Smith.
We carry on relations with him from that
as a starting-point. We cannot attempt
to go into the immense complex of prior
causes ; we do not know, except quite
generally, what they are ; nor does he,
As a rule we cannot predict nor can he
what their outcome will be when he
chooses between particular courses on a
particular occasion. It is because of that
ignorance and that inability that the choice
for John Smith for his own personality,
such as it is, at that moment is an
open one. If he had been omniscient, as
to his own origin, his own past, his own
character, the choice would not have been
" free." But he is not omniscient. As

68

IS THERE FREE WILL ?

Spinoza said, " Man thinks himself free
because he is conscious of his wishes and
appetites, whilst at the same time he is
ignorant of the causes by which he is led
to wish and desire, not dreaming what they

are."

Let us examine this point a little more
closely. "As a rule" we cannot predict
the choice that will be made. But some-
times we can ; or at all events we can say
what are the probabilities. Sometimes we
may succeed in disentangling one set of
influences from the rest, and identifying
certain results that usually follow from
them ; and we are accustomed to do
that in practice when we are able. For
example, national characteristics and train-
ing play an important part in determining
action. In a shipwreck, if the crew con-
sists of men of one nationality, with certain
race characteristics and a certain training,
we may expect them to act with courage
and resource and without panic ; if they
are of another nationality, lacking those
qualities, the conduct may be expected to

69

PRACTICAL ETHICS

be different. Each man in either crew has
free choice as to his actions, but most of
the individuals belonging to one set would
in fact be found to act in one way, most
of the others in a different way. Two
armies confront one another, one drawn
from a soldierly race, well trained and dis-
ciplined, the other drawn from a race
without martial qualities and consisting of
raw recruits ; each soldier in each army
will either fight or run ; but everyone can
tell beforehand that the one army will
advance and the other will retreat.

So in an individual case. I meet John
Smith and I may be considering whether I
should enter into some business trans-
action with him. I know that, as a human
being, he can choose freely whether to
treat me honestly or dishonestly ; but if
I am aware that he is one of a family with
a bad commercial reputation and that he
himself has been a fraudulent bankrupt, I
should be inclined to say that he may very
possibly choose to treat me dishonestly ;
someone else, who did not have those dis-

70

IS THERE FREE WILL ?

abilities, would be less likely to do so. I
might prove to be wrong. There is no
certainty about the matter. If the trans-
action were entered into, he might perhaps
carry it out quite conscientiously. But the
probabilities seem to be the other way ; and
I should in fact prefer to make the contract
with another person.

It is because of considerations such as
these that it is worth while to train children,
to carry out any kind of social activity.
Although we cannot be sure on account
of the fact of free will that in the case of
any particular individual such influences
will have the effect that is desired, yet
we know from experience that, we are
originating sets of causes, which will
work in with many others, and will
play their proportionate part in moulding
the characters which will decide the
acts.

There are two valid answers that may
be given to the young criminal who says
that he is merely the product of circum-
stances, that he has not been able, and

7*

PRACTICAL ETHICS

will in future not be able, to do other
than he is doing, and that it is both useless
and unjust to subject him to punishment.
The first answer is that what he says is
untrue. Prior causes have given him a
character that has made him yield to the
temptation to commit crimes, but they
have also given him a conscious will which,
by an effort, might enable him to resist
the temptation. As likely as not his own
brother, with a similar inheritance and a
similar environment, is not a criminal.
Very many people, who have committed
crimes, do in fact liberate themselves
from their past and change their way of
life.

The second answer is that the probable
consequences of an action form one of the
factors in the matter. The anticipation of
those consequences affects the mind of the
agent prior to the action. The influence
may be strong or weak, decisive or not,
according to the circumstances and to the
person's character ; but the influence is
there. Imagine a man of the criminal

72

IS THERE FREE WILL i

type contemplating a burglary. If he can
be quite sure that he will not be caught
and sent to prison, we may suppose that
he will certainly do it ; if there is a serious
risk, he will hesitate, and may commit the
burglary or not ; if there is a certainty that
he will be caught and punished, he will not
commit it. There is no room to doubt
that, if police forces were to be abolished,
and if no one were ever prosecuted for an
offence and no one ever sentenced, the
number of persons who in the exercise of
their freedom of choice, would choose to
commit crimes would be far greater then
than it is now ; the general welfare 'would
suffer in consequence. When it is said that
the existence of the police and of the penal
law did not stop A B from choosing to
commit a crime, to which he was impelled
by prior causes and on account of which
he is now serving a term of imprisonment,
it may be answered that that is quite true ;
but that C D and E F have not com-
mitted crimes, and that the existence of
the police and of the penal law has been

73

PRACTICAL ETHICS

part of the complex of causes which
has led them to choose not to commit
crimes.

It is often thought that to admit any
element of determinism is to accept a creed
of fatalism. But it will be seen that the
position taken here is not fatalist. It is
the very opposite of fatalist. It holds that
human conduct, like physical events, is the
result of prior causes, but it does not
accept the deduction that individual men
are mere flotsam on an ocean of necessity,
rising and falling with the tides, drifting
with the currents here and there. It holds,
on the contrary, that out of the vast con-
geries of prior causes which includes the
whole evolution of the human race there
have emerged conscious will, character,
power of choice ; there has emerged the
capacity to set on foot new causes, which
in their turn will achieve, for good or ill,
further results. Individual moral responsi-
bility remains. " You talk of Fate ! "
said Meredith, "It is the seed we sow

74

IS THERE FREE WILL ?

individually or collectively. " " Character
is Fate," said Novalis.

But the emphasis laid upon the fact of
ultimate causation makes it clear why it is
right and why it is useful to secure, so
far as we can, that the social causes which
help to mould the future shall be well
planned and beneficent. Those who accept
the principles here advanced would find in
them, not a justification for a fatalistic
apathy, but rather a spur to a more intense
activity.

Nor is the position truly open to the
charge, sometimes made, that it is a re-
version to a materialist philosophy now
generally discredited. To hold that mind
is within the universe and man part of
nature, and that both are subject to the
Laws of Causality and of Uniformity, is
not to hold that there is no difference
between mind and matter and that human
conduct is subject merely to physical forces.
The influences which affect thought and
conduct are themselves largely mental, and
often operate from within ; the forces

75

PRACTICAL ETHICS

which affect matter are purely physical and
external. But there may be causality in
the one case as in the other. To argue
convincingly against materialism is not to
prove a case against the universality of
causation. The two questions are separ-
ate. And to say matter is subject to
causation ; mind and conduct are different
from matter ; therefore mind and conduct
are not subject to causation that would be
the most obvious of logical fallacies.

76

CHAPTER V

DUTY AND INCLINATION

COMING now to the question why people
should do what is right and not do what
is wrong, we see at once that there is no
difficulty in giving the answer as respects
one large class of right actions. They are
the actions which will conduce to the im-
mediate advantage of the person concerned.
Examples have been given of acts which
bring benefit to oneself and which it is
also one's duty to do. They need not
occupy us here ; since it is to the interest
of the agent to act rightly and he has no
inducement to do otherwise, the reason
for right action is self-evident.

The problem for consideration is why
people should act rightly in that class of
cases where it is not to their direct advan-
tage to do so, where it may even be to

77

PRACTICAL ETHICS

their disadvantage. In seeking an answer
we shall be well advised, here again, not
to try to create out of our own reasoning
some a priori theory, but rather to go to
life as it is lived. Let us see why it is
that men do in practice often, though not
always, behave rightly, when they might
gain an immediate advantage by doing
otherwise.

At once it becomes apparent that it is
not a single motive which influences them
but a variety of motives. Some of these
will be accounted worthy and some un-
worthy ; some will have influence with
one man and some with another ; some-
times one among them will predominate
and settle the matter ; sometimes there
will be a combination of motives, and
sometimes a conflict, when the resultant
of several forces pulling different ways
will decide the outcome.

Let us take a concrete illustration. Con-
sider a form of dishonesty .which used
formerly to be fairly common, the adul-
teration of foods. No one will doubt that

78

DUTY AND INCLINATION

it is wrong for a tradesman to put water
into the milk he sells, or sand into the sugar.
Nevertheless, some tradesmen have done so.
Others have not. Why have they not ?

With one man the sufficient reason will
be that he is honest. He knows that it is
dishonest to make a profit by deceiving his
customers, and selling them articles which
are not what they think they are buying,
which are inferior and may be deleterious.
His inheritance, his training, perhaps his
religious beliefs, lead him to value honesty
for its own sake. He would be ashamed
to do a dishonourable thing. Without
considering the matter from any other
point of view, that is enough for him.
He does not sell adulterated goods be-
cause he is "a man of principle."

His competitor in the next street may
also be honest in his trading, but for a
different reason. He believes that honesty
pays. He belongs to the large class of
people who accept the maxim that
" honesty is the best policy/ 3 and act
upon it. In other words, he is ready to

79

PRACTICAL ETHICS

sacrifice any immediate financial advant-
age to himself that might be gained by
selling adulterated goods for the sake of
some greater advantage to himself that
will be gained by not doing so. Such
benefit may be of various kinds. It may
be financial ; he may think his business
will prosper best if he is relied upon
as an honest man ; selling bad goods
might prove to be the road to ruin. It
may be social ; he may care about his
reputation, with his family, his friends,
the people of the town ; honesty will bring
its reward in the respect of others, pos-
sibly in the conferment of positions of
dignity ; dishonesty, sooner or later, would
forfeit esteem, with consequences which
he would regret. Or the benefit may be
connected with his religious faith ; he may
believe that honesty will be rewarded and
dishonesty penalized in some metaphysical
manner, either in this world or in another
world, or in both ; he, personally, will
gain or lose accordingly.

A third tradesman would be dishonest if
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DUTY AND INCLINATION

he dared. He is restrained mainly by the
laws against adulteration. He is of the
class who, before such laws were passed,
did in fact put water into the milk and
sand into the sugar. Now he is afraid of
being detected and prosecuted. If that
were to happen he would not only have to
pay a fine, but in addition his business might
be seriously injured by the publicity and the
discredit, and he might lose his livelihood.
The motives, then, are various. There
is simple virtue caring for good for its
own sake. And there are the several forms
of indirect self-interest ; a later benefit is
expected which will more than compensate
for the immediate sacrifice. That benefit
may be material ; or it may be social,
springing from care for reputation or
" love of fame " ; or it may be conferred
through a supernatural agency ; or it may
be security from punishment at the hands
of the law.

Is it possible to simplify the matter by
resolving all these various motives into

81

PRACTICAL ETHICS

one ? There is a " philosophic craving for
unity " which has always striven to do
that. Philosophers have tried to find " the
basis for ethics," as though it must neces-
sarily be single, in the same way that they
have tried to define " the good." Some
would persuade us as has already been
mentioned that the sole motive for moral
action is to be found in promoting the wel-
fare of others, and that actions taken in
one's own interest, however legitimate they
may be, must therefore be considered, for
the sake of the theory, not to be " moral."
It is as though one should say that an
action which benefits oneself directly, and
does no harm to others, which everyone
agrees to be right and which everyone does
as a matter of course, is, for that very
reason, not to be considered right in a
philosophical sense ! Other writers take
the opposite view, and seek to find an
indirect egoistic motive for every altruistic
act ; they seek to show that duty and
interest are the same, because every duty
is really an interest. But this theory also

82

DUTY AND INCLINATION

does not conform to the facts which we
see about us.

It is true to say that it is to the interest
of " the individual " to do all that is in his
power to promote the welfare of society ;
but we are speaking there of a generalized
abstract " individual," not of any particular
person on any particular occasion. There
may be persons who have to be called upon
definitely to sacrifice their own advantage, on
certain occasions, for the sake of society.
That is perfectly understood and constantly
done. To say that they are really promoting
their own interests by sacrificing them is a
straining of words. It is like the pro-
visions in the constitution of a certain
imaginary country drawn up by a modern
satirist : " The citizens must understand
that they exist only to do service to the
State ; for the State is themselves. They
must be prepared to sacrifice their liberty
of action and opinion to it both in peace
and war. In peace the citizens must con-
sent to surrender all their possessions, if
required, for the benefit of the State, which

83

PRACTICAL ETHICS

is (in a larger sense) their own benefit ;
and in war they must be content to be
killed as the best means (in the wider out-
look) of self-preservation."

When we ask why people should do that
which they ought to do, it is useless, in
many cases, to answer that we are appealing
only to the motive of self-interest. If that
motive were adequate, no one would ever
do wrong. While in the study we may
be thinking of the interest in the long run
of an abstract citizen animated by en-
lightened motives, in the street and the
market-place we have to deal in practice
with the interests of ordinary persons, as
they themselves see them, and as affecting
them in the short run. There is often a
discordance between the two, and our
immediate problem arises out of that dis-
cordance. If a man who is poverty-
stricken has the chance of stealing some
article of value without risk of detection,
it is his duty not to steal. It is also, no
doubt, his ultimate interest not to steal ;
partly owing to the effect of an act of dis-

84

DUTY AND INCLINATION

honesty on his dwn character and self-
esteem, partly because he will prosper best
in a society of honest men, and such a
society requires that all the members of
it, of whom he is one, should be honest.
But his immediate interest is to relieve his
poverty by stealing. At all events, he may
think so, with the result that sometimes
men do in fact steal.

There is constantly a difference between
Duty and Inclination, between doing what
we ought to do and doing what we would
like to do ; and it is mere sophistry to
say that, " in the long run," or " rightly
viewed," the two are identical. That may
often be true, but sometimes it is not.
And where it is true, the motive is fre-
quently not adequate to control conduct.

The argument sometimes takes a more
subtle form. It is said : " Anything that I
do is what I have decided to do ; what
I decide to do can only be what I wish to
do ; and whatever I wish to do must be
for my own advantage, as I interpret that
advantage at the time, for otherwise I

85

PRACTICAL ETHICS

should not be wishing it." Such reasoning
would lead to the conclusion that a man
who, in a shipwreck, gives up his place
in a boat to a woman, or a martyr who
goes to the stake rather than recant his
faith, are acting out of regard for their
own interests. This offends against com-
mon sense, and philosophies based upon
these principles have never won the assent
of the ordinary man.

It is difficult to see the reason for these
attempts repeated again and again from
the time of Plato to our own to force the
facts to fit a preconceived theory of unity.
Why need we assume that all the influences
that prompt to right action can ultimately
be resolved into one ? Why should we
feel obliged to show, either that all altruism
is really a form of egoism ; or else that all
egoism is really a form of altruism (or, if
it is not, that it is to be excluded, for that
reason, from the purview of ethics alto-
gether) ? Both may be valid ; both may
be real " in their own right." Just as,
when we were considering the various

86

DUTY AND INCLINATION

kinds of " goods/' we found that some
actions were good because their results
were beneficial to the agent and some
because their results were beneficial to
others, and that, for many purposes, the
two could be considered separately, so now
we may reach the conclusion that the
reasons why men should act rightly may
be broadly grouped into two similar cate-
gories. Egoism and altruism are both
fundamental to morals. It is true that
several motives which appear at first sight
to be altruistic, and are constantly so con-
sidered are really egoistic such as the
conviction that " honesty is the best
policy," or the righteousness that springs
from the hope of a divine reward and from
the fear of retribution. But not all can
be so resolved. Unification would do
violence to the facts, and it must there-
fore be surrendered.

Innate, not only in human, but in
animal nature generally, are both the in-
stinct of self-preservation or self-advantage,

87

PRACTICAL ETHICS

and the instinct of affection, sympathy,
self-sacrifice. Animals will fly from
danger, for the sake of self-preservation ;
but if they have young they will often
stand and face the danger. They will run
risks in the endeavour to protect their off-
spring, although as individuals they have
nothing to gain, directly or indirectly, by
their action. Ants and bees will sacrifice
themselves unhesitatingly for the sake of
the colony or the hive. Birds build nests,
and it is difficult to discover any egoistic
motive which would account for their doing
so. In a previous chapter I have recalled
the fact that co-operation, equally with
competition, is integral to the evolutionary
process. Those individuals that lack the
instinct of altruism, at all events in its
most primitive form of the care for off-
spring, do not, from the nature of the case,
leave progeny that survive, and cannot
therefore be progenitors of a species. In
the course of evolution this instinct is
carried forward into man.

" When we come to human society/ 1
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DUTY AND INCLINATION

says Professor Hobhouse, " we find the
basis for a social organization of life
already laid in the animal nature of man.
Like others of the higher animals, man is
a gregarious beast. . . . His loves and
hates, his joys and sorrows, his pride, his
wrath, his gentleness, his boldness, his
timidity all these permanent qualities,
which run through humanity and vary
only in degree, belong to his inherited
structure. Broadly speaking, they are of
the nature of instincts. "

Among these, sociality is one of the most
powerful and most significant. The social
instinct reveals itself at once in the affections
of infancy and childhood. Overlaid though
it often is by the sophistications of civilized
societies, the instinct persists. It runs
through life side by side with the instinct of
self-preservation and self-interest. The
moral philosopher must accept them both as
given facts ; as the physiologist must accept
as given the facts that we have two eyes
or two hands, or that there are two sexes.

It may be asked whether what is said

PRACTICAL ETHICS

here with regard to the importance of
instincts is not in contradiction with what
was said earlier as to the non-acceptance
of intuition which is a form of instinct
as a determining factor in right conduct.
No contradiction need be admitted. In-
stinct cannot be a safe guide in the intricate
complexities of social relations. We recog-
nize that it is the initial force in our
activities, but we recognize also that, in
most cases, it can and it ought to be
controlled and directed by reason. Experi-
ence, reflection, training enter in. In-
stinct is not a power which is autocratic
and irresistible. A man, describing some
emergency, will often say, " I was instinc-
tively inclined to do so-and-so, but a
moment's reflection showed me that it
would be a mistake." All considered
action, indeed all civilization, is the modifi-
cation of instinct by reason. Subtract that
control and man reverts to the animal level.

Seeking why it is that men do act
rightly when they do we may arrive,

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DUTY AND INCLINATION

then, at these conclusions. Right actions
may be divided into three classes. There
are those which bring immediate benefit
to the agent ; he will do such actions for
that reason. There are those which are
not to his immediate benefit, but which he
believes will bring him some kind of
indirect gain that, in his opinion, will more
than outweigh any direct loss ; he will do
such actions also from an egoistic motive.
And there are those which will bring him,
personally, no benefit that he can perceive,
direct or indirect, immediate or ultimate,
or which will even cause him evident harm ;
he will do these actions if he does
them from motives of affection, sym-
pathy, goodwill, sense of duty, from the
altruistic motive, whatever form it may
take.

It should be added that there are
obviously many actions which partake
partly of one character and partly of
another, and that a man will often take a
right course from mixed motives. And
acts of passion or unreason have not been

9 1

PRACTICAL ETHICS

included in this analysis ; they stand on a
different footing.

We may now go forward to the next
stage in the inquiry. The problem for
ethics now becomes this How can the
various influences which lead to right con-
duct be strengthened, and those which
lead to wrong conduct be weakened or
eliminated, so that welfare may be pro-
moted ?

92

CHAPTER VI

TRAINING AND HABIT

THE chief means upon which mankind
may rely to promote good conduct and
to deter from bad, is training. Youth is
plastic and even age can learn. From the
day of birth, through infancy, childhood
and adolescence, all kinds of influences
are brought to bear upon the individual ;
some are continued into maturity and
on into old age. There are the direct
influences of the family, the school, the
church, the occupation ; there are the
diffused, pervasive, influences of news-
papers, broadcasting, books, entertainments
all the various means by which a com-
munity, deliberately or at haphazard,
impresses ideas upon its members. All
of them together set a standard of conduct.
The standard may be high or low ; if it

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

is high it will produce a worthy civilization,
and the average citizen will be of good
conduct ; and the opposite if the social
standard is low.

Of great importance in this connection
is Habit. Psychologists have shown us that
a large part of our actions are directed by
functions in our minds which are sub-
conscious ; and indeed this is plain from
ordinary observation. When we walk, or
eat, or speak, the conscious will determines
where we walk, what we eat or what we
say, but the physical movements them-
selves take place " automatically " ; that
is to say they are controlled by brain-
functions which do not call into play our
conscious will. Any action continually
repeated, becomes a matter of habit ; it
passes into the subconscious ; we act
without giving attention to our action.
There is a physical reason for this : " our
nervous system grows into the modes in
which it had been exercised/'

The same " force of habit " appears in
matters much less elementary than walking,

94

TRAINING AND HABIT

eating or speaking. An English motorist
will drive as a matter of course on the left
side of the road without thinking about it,
just as a French motorist will drive on the
right. If either goes for a motor tour in
the other country, he has to make a
deliberate effort of will to change his prac-
tice ; he must continue to give conscious
attention to the point until he has become
accustomed to the different rule ; his action
then again becomes habit, though a differ-
ent habit ; it reverts to the sub-conscious.
A company of soldiers at the end of
three years' training is very different from
what it was at the beginning. The men
may be the same persons, but the constant
drill, the continual repetition of the same
actions in obedience to the same com-
mands, the custom of acting together as
one body these influences have formed
habits. The result of the military dis-
cipline is that the men move at command
" almost instinctively." So also, in large
measure, with the moral discipline that is
given in childhood and youth.

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

The ordinary person, trained in a family,
a school, a social environment, in which
honesty is a normal condition, becomes
himself honest as a matter of habit. If he
happens to see some passer-by with a note-
case protruding from his pocket, he does
not begin to cogitate whether it would or
would not be safe to steal it. He either
does nothing, or he warns the passer-by
that he may be losing his note-case. But
another person, who has been brought up
under different influences, with whom
honesty has not become a sub-conscious
habit, who may indeed himself have com-
mitted thefts already, will begin to think
whether it is safe to steal the note-case, and
may decide to do so.

A proverb says truly that habit is second
nature. It may be a force of gre&t social
value. As Professor Bergson wrote, " The
habit of forming habits is at the base of
societies and a condition of their existence ;
its force is comparable to that of instinct. "

But there is another side to be considered
also. The formation of good habits, re-

96

TRAINING AND HABIT

suiting in right actions, is by no means the
only thing that is necessary to well-being.
Everyone recognizes that character is of
prime importance ; and there are many
other elements in character besides a
response to discipline and a capacity to
absorb into the subconscious the results of
past influences. Self-reliance, initiative, the
power to choose the right course by one's
own knowledge and to follow it by one's
own volition, these also are elements, and
prime elements, in well-being. A form of
training which eliminated these, in order
to make certain of good conduct, would
clearly be harmful on balance. A social
system that succeeded in making its people
well behaved at the cost of keeping them
enslaved, ignorant and apathetic, would be
a bad social system. It may be argued
that at all events it would be inducing men
to act so as to bring good results and not
bad, and that therefore the " doctrine of
consequences " should justify it. To this
the answer is obvious the very production
of a population of a degraded type would

97 D

PRACTICAL ETHICS

have been in itself the worst of conse-
quences ; to continue to produce further
generations that were no better would
lessen human welfare and not increase it.
Goods and bads must be weighed against
each other. Sparta had elements of great-
ness, but her system had elements of base-
ness also. The civilization of Athens was
richer and nobler. Our own civilization
will not reach the heights of well-being
until there come the generations

" With flame of freedom in their souls
And light of knowledge in their eyes."

Training, then, must not sacrifice, for
the sake of forming good habits, the native
energy and power of will which each
personality brings with him into the world.
The best father is not he who guides every
step of his child and shields him from all
possibility of harm. He is not the best
schoolmaster who adopts the methods of
the drill-sergeant. Nor is it the best form
of government which imposes efficiency at
the cost of liberty.

98

TRAINING AND HABIT

Here we approach the problem which
is the province of the educationist. The
task of the schoolmaster was regarded in
the eighteenth century as consisting almost
entirely in the imparting of knowledge ;
in order to ensure that the teaching should
not be wasted it was chiefly necessary to
instil into the pupils the habit of industry
in the learning of their lessons. In the
nineteenth century it was realized that the
all-round training of character was of equal,
and perhaps of greater, importance. In the
twentieth, we are coming to see that, for
right character, the development of full and
free individuality is essential. A right action
is not rightly done unless it is freely done.

A good system of education, then, must
combine these various factors the im-
parting of knowledge, the formation of
habits, the preservation of self-reliance
and initiative. How in practice to blend
them in their right proportions is the
question to which in these days many
devoted educationists, in all countries, are
actively addressing their minds.

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

Among the influences which society can
bring to bear in order to promote good
conduct and discourage bad, four stand
out predominant. One is the home ; to
this reference will be made later. Another
is the school. *>The third is religion. The
fourth consists in rewards conferred and
penalties imposed, either formally by the
State or informally by the members of the
community themselves.

IOC

CHAPTER VII

RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES

LOOKING back over the history of man-
kind it will be plain that the chief agent
in promoting morality has been religion.
If the child, the youth, the man have to
be taught to form habits of right action,
to take the long view, to forgo immediate
personal gain for the sake of a more
distant common advantage, it has been the
religious organizations that have been the
principal teachers. Among all the races
of men, from primitive times on into the
modern world, religion has striven to
point the way and to strengthen the
impulse to moral conduct.

But in our own age this force has
clearly been weakening. East or West,
wherever we look, we see a growing
divorce between religion and daily life.

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

The hold of the creeds upon conduct has
been loosening. Vast numbers of people,
indeed, have not felt the change, but vast
numbers have felt it. If we compare, in
most countries, the influence to-day of
the church, the temple, the mosque, the
synagogue, with what it was two hundred
years ago, or even one hundred years ago,
we cannot fail to note the difference.
Thoughtful men will not ignore this fea-
ture in the contemporary world, or under-
estimate its importance. It cannot fail
to be a cause of grave anxiety ; not only
to the leaders of the religious organiza-
tions, but to everyone. If the ancient
buttress of morality is weakening, how
can it be strengthened ? Or is there a
substitute ? Philosophy cannot neglect
facts that are patent and profoundly sig-
nificant, and look the other way as though
the matter were not her concern. A
survey of practical ethics would be in-
complete indeed which took no acccount
of the past and the present of the greatest
of ethical forces.

102

RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES

The chief reason for the existing situa-
tion is plain enough. The new factor
which has come in, and has made the
difference, is modern science. There is
a field in which the spheres of religion
and science have overlapped. So far as
the creeds have dealt with the nature of
the universe, its origins or its history,
with the history of man, or with par-
ticular events in the realm of nature, they
occupy ground which science also occu-
pies ; they have felt the impact of the
discoveries of astronomy and geology, of
physics and biology. The acceptance
by the scientific world of the Law of
Causality, the Law of Uniformity and
the Principle of Evolution has inevitably
had a profound effect upon certain of the
beliefs, dating from earlier times, which
had been regarded as integral parts of
the several religions. There arose what
has been called " the conflict between
Science and Religion. " It is this con-
flict which, more than any other one

cause, has thrown the modern world into

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

the state of intellectual confusion in which
it finds itself.

It cannot be ended by saying that what
science declares does not matter to
religion, and what religion declares does
not matter to science. As the Italian
philosopher, Professor Aliotta, puts it,
" It is a false way of understanding the
spiritual life, to claim to divide the soul
into various compartments, in one of
which, for example, would stand philo-
sophy, in another religion, in another art,
and so on. The spirit is entire in all its
functions. " " Reality is one/' says Pro-
fessor Pringle-Pattison, " and, after all,
the human mind is also one, and not a
bundle of unconnected and conflicting
faculties. "

Nor can the conflict be ended by
emphasizing the limitations and they are
real of science. We may agree that a
vast province lies beyond the domain of
human knowledge. We may agree that
the things that we know are things as we

104

RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES

know them ; " the eye sees only what it
brings with it the power of seeing " ;
what our minds perceive must be con-
nected with reality, but is not likely to
be identical with reality. We may readily
admit that what is held in one age to have
been proved as true is often found by
later discovery not to be true. Many
times science has offered a theory which
the world too soon has acclaimed as a
fact, and disillusionment has followed.
" No man of science," says Professor
Whitehead, " could subscribe without
qualification to Galileo's beliefs, or to
Newton's beliefs, or to all bis own scien-
tific beliefs of ten years ago/ But with
all caution and with every allowance for
error, there remain many things, lying
well within the present sphere of human
knowledge, which the mind is bound to
accept as true. If the exponents of a
particular creed deny these, they will
succeed only in alienating numbers of
clear-sighted and intellectually honest
men.

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

And the conflict could not be ended,
on the other hand, by claims to be all-
comprehending, which, in an earlier day,
were sometimes made on behalf of science.
Such claims are not now heard. It is
recognized that, since the universe, as
we know it through science, is not self-
explanatory or self-sufficient, there must
of necessity be something outside it or
within it, of which science does not tell
us, but which is fundamental.

Analyse as far as you will the things
about us. See the human body as a
complicated congeries of cells, each cell
as an organization of chemical atoms,
each atom as a system of electrons mov-
ing at immense speeds. See the stars
as blazing, swirling masses of gas ;
destined to cool, to divide possibly into
suns and planets, to produce earths like
this, even to evolve in some cases, in a
billion years, some kind of living occu-
pants. Accept, if you will, the Einsteinian
theory that space is curved and returns
on itself and the universe is finite. We

1 06

RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES

are still only at the beginning. Even if
a perfected knowledge traces some day
the whole course of development, from
the simplest elementary stuff to the
highest manifestations of mind " the
evolution of gas into genius " the ques-
tion will remain, whence the gas ; whence
its capacity so to evolve ? Even if dis-
covery succeeds in breaking down the
distinction between living and not living,
and it is found that there is one continuous
whole still will remain the problem of
the existence of that whole, and of the
existence of its qualities. We have come
to know that much that earlier genera-
tions were called upon to believe is not
credible. But that there is nothing to
be believed that would be the most
incredible of all.

This book is not a treatise on religion ;
and it is not within my function to dis-
cuss how far present currents of thought
tend towards a reconciliation between
religion and science or in what way an
adjustment may be reached. But it is

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

impossible for any writer on practical
ethics in these times not to express a
deep concern lest the influence which
has been the main support of a sane
morality among the hundreds of millions
of human beings living together on this
planet, should be weakened, and totter,
and fall.

Nor could any writer on ethics accept
the position that this disaster should be
avoided by the rejection or the sub-
ordination of truth. Fatal would be the
dilemma offered by any who would say
that, since beliefs which reason must
reject are integral parts of their creeds,
and since their creeds are the essential
foundation of morality, we must accept
what we are convinced is false rather than
lose what we know is good. Whitehead
has stated the position in powerful langu-
age : " When we consider what religion
is for mankind, and what science is, it is
no exaggeration to say that the future
course of history depends upon the
decision of this generation as to the

108

RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES

relations between them. We have here
the two strongest general forces (apart
from the mere impulse of the various
senses) which influence men, and they
seem to be set one against the other the
force of our religious intuitions, and the
force of our impulse to accurate observa-
tion and logical deduction. "

Most precious among the treasures of
man are both Goodness and Truth. Is
he to be told that he may have Goodness
only if he is ready to surrender Truth, or
else Truth, but only at the sacrifice of
Goodness ? A sound ethic must insist
that these shall not be made the subject
of an impossible choice. Whatever may
be the means and the method, it is vital
to the well-being of mankind that the two
shall merge.

There are, of course, other causes for
the weakening of religious influences be-
sides the impact of the new science on
the old theologies. Powerful and wide-
spread in the modern world is the move-

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

ment among the peoples for the improve-
ment of the standards of living. A just
discontent with poverty, insecurity, in-
feriority of status, bad environment, is the
underlying force which impels hundreds
of millions of the working-classes, and
vast numbers of others who think them
right, to strive, with unceasing effort,
towards better conditions. The move-
ment, taking various forms, industrial and
political, permeates all the progressive
countries of the world. From the time
of the French Revolution, which was
largely a social upheaval, the movement
found itself not everywhere, but almost
everywhere either actively opposed, or
at the least discountenanced, by the ecclesi-
astical organizations. Enthusiastic social
reformers, animated by what they were
convinced was a deeply moral purpose,
were alienated when they found, ranked
among the defenders of existing abuses,
or forming part of that vast mass of inert
indifference which was so hard to move,
those whose functions made them the

no

RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES

official exponents of the accepted creeds.
Religion and social progress, which should
have been allies, appeared to be enemies.
The division sometimes hampered social
progress ; more often it injured the cause
of religion. In the latter part of the nine-
teenth century and during the present
century, there has been a change in many
countries. The churches are no longer,
for the most part, a merely conservative
force. But some effect remains from the
earlier conflict.

Further, there has come in recent years
the moral shock of the Great Wars. Since
1914, multitudes of people, who would
not ordinarily pay much attention to the
deeper questions of life and morality, have
been forced, by their own experiences
and the experiences of those nearest to
them, to think about fundamental things.
The contrast between what they have
been taught and what they have seen,
between a divine and loving ordering of
the world and " the senseless abomination
of modern war," is so glaring that the

in

PRACTICAL ETHICS

new generation stands bewildered. It
awaits some fresh interpretation.

But these also are matters which would
take us too far afield.

112

CHAPTER VIII

REWARDS AND PENALTIES

EVERY man is moved partly by self-
interest and partly by altruism ; the pro-
portions vary in individuals according to
their characters, but both motives are
always present. Moralists may rank the
altruistic as the higher, but they cannot
dispense with the egoistic. A system of
ethics which relied solely upon sympathy
and the good will to ensure right conduct
would be regarded as unpractical, and
justly so. Any nation which abolished
straightway all restraints upon bad action
and all rewards for good action, in the
hope that every man would do right for
the sake of the right, would collapse.
Those conditions are the ideal ; we may
advance towards them ; we dare not act
as though they had already been achieved.

PRACTICAL ETHICS

Rewards and penalties, apart from those
which religion offers, are of various kinds.
There is one system established by the
State ; men may be influenced by the
hope of honours and dignities that Govern-
ment can confer and by the fear of punish-
ments imposed by the law. This is the
special province of politics, which includes
jurisprudence. There is a second system
which is the outcome of the economic
organization of society. If a man shows
qualities of industry, enterprise and re-
liability he expects to be rewarded with a
comfortable livelihood, or even, under the
existing order of society, with affluence ;
if he lacks those qualities he may expect
to be penalized by poverty or destitution.
This is the province of economics. And
there is a third system which is founded on
public opinion. The community can give
praise or blame, can confer rewards of its
own for merit and inflict penalties of its
own for wrong-doing.

The three systems are inter-connected.
No clear dividing-line can be drawn

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REWARDS AND PENALTIES

between them. But since one of them
primarily belongs to politics and one to
economics, I propose to limit myself here
to the third, and to invite consideration
of the part played by public opinion as a
sanction for morality.

Because man is a social being he cares
for the judgement of his fellows. He is
gratified by praise and hurt by blame. To
possess a good reputation with family,
neighbours, friends, to avoid social con-
demnation or ostracism, is undoubtedly a
motive for good conduct. Pliny stated the
case with substantial truth, though perhaps
with some exaggeration, when he said,
" How few there are who preserve the
same delicacy of conduct in secret as when
exposed to the view of the world. The
truth is, the generality of mankind stand
in awe of public opinion, while conscience
is feared only by the few." Huxley ex-
pressed much the same view : "It is need-
ful only to look around us to see that
the greatest restrainer of the anti-social

"5

PRACTICAL ETHICS

tendencies of men is fear, not of the law,
but of the opinion of their fellows. The
conventions of honour bind men who
break legal, moral, and religious bonds ;
and while people endure the extremity of
physical pain rather than part with life,
shame drives the weakest to suicide/' A
saying of the Arabs puts the point with
cynical brevity : " In a town where you
know no one, do whatever you like."

Every- day observation shows that where
there is no effective public opinion, morals
more easily become lax. A description of
a riverside street in a port in the north-
east of England gives a typical example.
"It is a street in which one feels in-
creasingly as one approaches the ferry that
riverside quality into which the quarters
of every town that lie near the wharves and
banks always seem to deteriorate. There
is something in the intercourse of sailors
from other ports who come and go, no-
madic, unvouched for, who appear and
disappear, with no responsibility for their
words or their deeds, that seems to bring

116

REWARDS AND PENALTIES

to the whole world a kinship of lawless-
ness and disorder. " Against such things
society seeks to defend itself, in the first
instance, by publicity. " As gas-light,"
said Emerson, " is found to be the best
nocturnal police, so the universe protects
itself by pitiless publicity."

The process is necessary, but it has its
dangers. It is necessary because the other
means of defence in the hands of society
the penal law cannot in practice be ap-
plied in many cases of wrong-doing ; it is
too clumsy and too rigid ; its weapon is
force rather than persuasion, and force may
easily go too far and destroy a proper inde-
pendence of thought and action. The law
may become " puritanical." Yet society
cannot consent to see moral order limited
within the narrow territories that may
be controlled by the penal law, leaving
anarchy everywhere outside.

The process has its dangers as well,
because the coercion of public opinion
may also be excessive, or it may be wrongly
directed. It will often take the easy

117

PRACTICAL ETHICS

course of declaring that whatever is
customary is therefore right, and mobiliz-
ing public disapproval against everything
that is unconventional.

In a well-directed community this danger
is recognized. Toleration of other people's
opinions and actions, so long as they are
not obviously injurious, is regarded as
right. We are tolerant, partly because we
can never be altogether sure that our own
opinions are sound ; at all events not so
sure as to allow us to feel that it would
be quite safe in the general interest to
suppress the other opinions. There is a
possibility, even though it may seem re-
mote, that it would be found afterwards
that we had made a mistake, and had
suppressed something that might have been
useful. We are tolerant also because of
the faith that liberty is a good thing in it-
self, and that people should not be robbed
of it unless they are so using their liberty
as to injure the welfare of others.

But even toleration may bring in turn
dangers of its own. In the modern world

118

REWARDS AND PENALTIES

there are few signs that toleration is likely
to go too far, but there are signs that
toleration may be confused with agree-
ment. To say, for example, that another
person has the same claim to practise his
religion as I have to practise mine is one
thing, but to say that all religions are
equally right is a different thing altogether.
Many people seem inclined to let the one
attitude slip into the other. There is a
danger that an age of toleration may prove
to be an age of indifference. To renounce
the power of compulsion does not remove
the duty of persuasion. The world cannot
advance if liberty of thought and action is
held to justify wrong thought and wrong
action.

Society, then, is faced by the problem
how to secure that the individual shall do
what will conduce to well-being on the
whole rather than what will conduce to his
own immediate well-being, as he would be
disposed to see it. To this end it seeks,
and rightly seeks, to make use of the motive

119

PRACTICAL ETHICS

of self-interest itself. The question is how
the individual can be led to prefer duty
to inclination, and the answer is that one
method though not the only method is
to give him an inducement to change the
original inclination into a different inclina-
tion which will correspond with the duty.
In other words he may be brought to do
what he ought, instead of what he would
like, by his duty being made advantage-
ous to him. And this can be achieved, not
merely by waiting till the occasion arises
and then offering some inducement, but
by establishing a state of things beforehand
which, so far as may be, will bring personal
interest, as the individual understands it,
into correspondence with general interest.
Society tries to accomplish this, some-
times through inculcating a sense of re-
ligion with its own system of rewards and
punishments ; sometimes through the force
of law or other State influences ; sometimes
through economic rewards or penalties ;
sometimes through the pressure of public
opinion. But, as we saw earlier, the pur-

120

REWARDS AND PENALTIES

pose cannot always be accomplished by
any of these methods. There will remain
a margin of cases in which the only valid
reason that can be given for preferring
duty to inclination is some form of altruism,
and not self-interest at all. The smaller
this margin can be made, the more likely
the community will be to secure in prac-
tice, among ordinary men, a high average
level of right action.

Moralists of all creeds and in all ages
have emphasized the connection between
good conduct and its reward and bad con-
duct and its punishment, and they have
not limited the connection to another world
after death. " Evil pursueth sinners ; but
to the righteous good shall be repaid,"
says the Book of Proverbs. In the Budd-
hist Dhammapada it is written : " If a man
speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain
follows him, as the wheel follows the foot
of the ox that draws the carriage. ... If
a man speaks or acts with a pure thought,
happiness follows him, like a shadow that

121

PRACTICAL ETHICS

never leaves him." And in the Chinese
Yi-King : " The family that accumulates
goodness is sure to have superabundant
happiness ; the family that accumulates
evil is sure to have superabundant misery."
In our own time a writer such as Huxley
was able to say : " The absolute justice of
the system of things is as clear to me as
any scientific fact. The gravitation of sin
to sorrow is as certain as that of the earth
to the sun, and more so for experimental
proof of the fact is within reach of us all
nay, is before us all in our own lives, if
we had but the eyes to see it."

None, however, would venture to con-
tend that the reward or the punishment
always accrues to the person himself who
acts, or that it follows directly upon the
action. It is obvious that it does not.
The connection is some time and some-
how, on the whole and in the long run.
But that there is such a connection is clear.

The reason is not far to seek. We have
supported the view that mankind have re-
garded as good such conduct as will bring

122

REWARDS AND PENALTIES

well-being, and as bad such as will bring
harm. They may often not have been
aware that they were doing so. They
may even have repudiated any such prin-
ciple. They may have declared that they
regarded as good only such conduct as
had been ordained by a particular religious
creed, without realizing that the creed
itself had so ordained for the reason that
the conduct was thought to be such as
would bring well-being. Often mistakes
have been made, and moral codes have
prescribed as duties various kinds of action
which experience showed to result not in
good but in harm. But if it is true that
actions on the whole are accounted good
or bad according to their consequences,
then it is quite clear why conduct, which
we term good, somehow and some time
brings rewards, and conduct which we
term bad brings penalties. If those were
not to be the results we should not so term
them. If " evil pursueth sinners," it is
precisely because " sin " is that which evil
pursues . If evil did not follow it we should

123

PRACTICAL ETHICS

not rank it as sin, Schweitzer says of
Marcus Aurelius that he is " an enthu-
siastic utilitarian, like the rationalists of
the eighteenth century, because he, like
them, is convinced that nature herself has
created an indissoluble connection between
morality and those tendencies which are
beneficial both to the individual and to the
community. " And to quote Huxley again,
he held that " there is a fixed order of
nature which sends social disorganization
upon the track of immorality, as surely as
it sends physical disease after physical tres-
passes." But it is not necessary to assume
some metaphysical agent called " nature "
which has created the connection. The
matter is far simpler. " Morality " con-
sists of those tendencies which are bene-
ficial ; " immorality " is that which causes
social disorganization ; just as " physical
trespasses " are called so because they are
those habits or negligences which do bring
about disease.

" The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us."
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REWARDS AND PENALTIES

But it is not a question of justice of " the
gods ". The simple fact is that when our
pleasures are such as to bring consequences
that plague us they are for that reason
classed as " vices."

The ordinary view on these matters
appears to see things that exist, but in-
verted. In the same way, before the estab-
lishment of the principle of evolution, the
current opinion as to man's relation with
nature was an inversion of the facts. It
held that man had been created by a
single, definite act ; his mind and body
had been adapted to the physical conditions
about him, and those conditions to his
mind and body ; the adaptation appeared
as a marvel of adjustment. There were
lungs able to breathe the air that was pro-
vided ; there was air ready to supply the
lungs. There were digestive organs able
to use the foodstuffs that existed, and
foodstuffs such as could nourish the organs.
And so throughout. Then it was found
that the world came first, and that man
was gradually developed in such form as

PRACTICAL ETHICS

would fit the world. The adjustment is
not less perfect, the process is not less
marvellous than at first appeared ; it may
be judged far more marvellous. But, given
the process, the outcome was inevitable ;
in the sense that man is inevitably a creature
who must suit his environment. If he had
not been so, he would not have come into
existence, just as countless varieties of
creatures, which the imagination might
conceive, have not come into existence.

So in the sphere of morals it has been
currently thought that there is some mys-
terious, transcendental adjustment between
the moral code and the rewards that seem,
as a rule, to be won by those who obey
it, the penalties that seem, as a rule, to
fall on those who break it. The adjust-
ment is there. But it is inevitable. It is
part of the very nature of the case. It
arises from the fact that the moral code
is made up of injunctions that have been
selected for the very reason that those are
believed to be the rules, obedience to which
brings welfare and disobedience suffering

126

REWARDS AND PENALTIES

either directly and immediately, or
indirectly and ultimately.

There is a second reason for the con-
nection. A community which wishes to
promote good conduct need not, as we
have seen, limit itself to appeals to pure
altruism. It may also invoke the motive
of egoism. Every community in fact does
so. The way of the transgressor is hard,
because society sets out to make it hard.
" The family that accumulates goodness "
has happiness because society tries so to
shape its laws and customs that those who
are good shall be happy. Obviously the
adjustment is often imperfect. On the
whole and in the long run the connection
holds, but for particular individuals and
in the short run it constantly does not.
Cases continually occur in actual life which
offend our sense of justice, precisely be-
cause the general rule that good conduct
should be followed by well-being does not
work out in practice. The cause some-
times lies in the fact that a mistake has

127

PRACTICAL ETHICS

been made in thinking that a certain course
of action will bring good results and is to
be classed as good. Experience shows
later that it has brought bad results and
should in future be classed as bad. Some-
times and very often the cause lies in
an imperfect social system, which has not
succeeded in properly adjusting its rewards
and its penalties to the needs of the case.
A sound ethics will lay great stress on the
need of finding a cure for those imper-
fections.

128

CHAPTER IX

SOCIAL ETHICS

AN answer has now been offered to
the second of the two questions which
we took as our starting-point. In seeking
the reasons why men should act rightly,
we held that the best course would be to
find what are the actual reasons which, in
ordinary life, lead men to act rightly, so
far as they do so. We found that they
were various, and that prominent among
them were social influences of several kinds.
But the conditions all about us show that
those influences often are wrongly directed
or ineffective for their purpose. So we
come to the question of the right direction
and the strengthening of those social in-
fluences, that is to say, to Social Ethics.

Moral Philosophy began as a study of
personal obligation, but it has found that

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

it is bound to concern itself also with
social obligation, since the two cannot be
separated. They can no more be con-
sidered apart from one another by ethics
than the organism and its environment
can be considered apart from one another
by biology ; and for similar reasons.
When, therefore, man sets out to consider
what he ought to do in order to promote
welfare, both his own and other people's,
he finds at once that a large part of his
duties concern him as one of a family, an
occupation, a church, a neighbourhood, a
country, or as a member of the human
race.

And each of those entities exercises upon
him and others all kinds of. influences ;
among them the influences that tend to
good conduct or bad. They are the agen-
cies through which public opinion acts.
Each of them from the family up to the
human race consists of the person him-
self and others like himself, and of nothing
else. If he and others cease to take part
in their activities, they will have no activi-

130

SOCIAL ETHICS

ties ; if he and others do not direct them
rightly, they will be directed wrongly.
There are duties which must be performed
with regard to each of them, and it is
obvious that a share of those duties rests
upon this man, in common with everyone
else concerned.

It is impossible to find any reason for
exempting anyone from performing social
duties according to his capacity. No one
may escape responsibility for wrongs com-
mitted by any organization of which he
is a unit, by saying that he had taken no
part in the matter and had had no share
in the action. To decide to do nothing
is itself a decision ; to remain inactive
is also an act. Whoever, for example,
acquiesces in autocracy must accept a share
of responsibility for the deeds of the auto-
crat. Whoever withdraws from the con-
cerns of his family, or occupation, or city,
or state, is plainly guilty of a dereliction of
duty. If he recognizes no need to act, why
should anyone else do so ? If no one
acts, social influences disappear. With

PRACTICAL ETHICS

their disappearance, the most powerful
safeguards of morality go as well, and with
morality goes human welfare. Individual
obedience to the requirements of social
ethics is the foundation on which all else
is built.

If that obedience is to be demanded and
obtained, it is essential that what is pre-
sented as a duty shall really be such. The
action which the individual is called upon
to take must truly be conducive to welfare,
so far as can be ascertained. If he dis-
covers it to be no more than a matter of
conforming to a routine or a convention,
or of obeying some ancient authority of
doubtful validity, with results which are
valueless or even harmful, then he finds
himself misled ; then the true duty is to
refuse the alleged duty.

This brings us to a subject to which
incidental reference has been made already,
the fact that morality is not static. The
ethical code changes, and should change,
with the development of ideas, with dis-

13*

SOCIAL ETHICS

coveries, with changes of environment.
Civilization emerges from barbarism pre-
cisely through the discovery that the right
is not identical with the customary.

It appears that in primitive societies, so
far as we are able to observe them, custom
is supreme and is rigid. It is perpetuated
through the training of the young ; it is
enforced by violence when necessary, or
by supernatural terrors invented to guard
it, such as the primitive mind will not
venture to challenge. But in course of
time, custom is undermined, modified or
overthrown by circumstances. The great
religions establish their codes. Innovators
at first and revolutionary, they too tend
with the centuries to rigidity. What is
right comes to be identified with what is
orthodox.

Then it is realized that this also does not
conduce to welfare. Experience shows that
harm is being done. " Human nature need
not be supposed to change/' said Samuel
Alexander, " but the enlargement of social
relations and the complexity of living mean

PRACTICAL ETHICS

a constant revision of moral standards
and a change in the system of conduct."
Sometimes this is effected suddenly and
by a violent convulsion ; far more often
it is effected gradually and almost imper-
ceptibly. Orthodoxy itself may change.
" The orthodoxy of one generation is never
precisely that of the next," The laws of
the State, also, adapt themselves, and with
greater ease. In every country the statute-
book of the nineteen-thirties was very differ-
ent from that of the eighteen-thirties.
And social conventions change even more
easily still.

Original and courageous minds strike
out along new paths. Careless of obloquy
or derision, brushing aside obstruction,
they insist that their ideas shall be put to
the test. They succeed or they fail ; they
win fame as benefactors, or they are for-
gotten. Succeed or fail, such are the salt
of the earth.

The old is not the best because of its
age ; but neither is the new the best be-

SOCIAL ETHICS

cause of its novelty. In each generation
young people may be tempted to think
that it is. They see with a fresh eye the
laws and customs of the society into which
they are born ; they perceive the futility
of many of the conventions which their
elders expect them to observe. If an ap-
peal is addressed to them on the ground
that everything which is customary is
prima facie right, they may be inclined
to decide that, since that is false, the
opposite may be true, and that everything
which is customary is prima facie wrong.
Opinions will differ, according to tem-
perament, as to which of these errors is
the worse, but that both are errors is
certain.

" * Old things need not be therefore true,'
O brother men, nor yet the new."

Change is not necessarily progress.
Every pioneer was regarded at first as a
crank ; but not every crank comes to be
regarded as a pioneer. Innovation must
justify itself. It is right that innovation

'35

PRACTICAL ETHICS

should have to overcome difficulties.
There should be friction enough to pre-
vent incessant motion, while not enough
to make motion too slow or impossible.
A volatile community, without any firm
basis of principle, taking no account at all
of its own traditions, with its ideas in con-
stant flux, would not serve its members
best.

Because a custom originated long ago,
had been justified on grounds now held
to be untenable, and endured because it
was protected by primitive taboos, it does
not follow that it is a bad custom. One
day's rest in seven, for example, is not to
be advocated nowadays on the ground that
the earth was made in six days, that the
Creator rested on the seventh, and that
therefore we should do the same ; but the
custom itself may be found by experience
to be most beneficial ; it may be quite
right to maintain it, and even to safeguard
it by law. The calendar of the French
Revolution, which established a week of
ten days, partly for the sake of a con-

136

SOCIAL ETHICS

venient arithmetical division of the month,
and partly in order to effect a change from
the ordinances of the Church, was found not
to be an improvement. The value of any
institution or rule or custom is not decided
by the history of its origins.

Every sound social system has in it an
element of conservatism. There is need of
caution against the too hasty acceptance
of plausible ideas which would in fact
prove harmful. What habit is to the in-
dividual, custom is to the community. It
is well to revise one's habits, and if need
be to change them, but not to go through
life without any settled rules. " The world
is born and advances by means of the
inventions of liberty ; it is preserved and
assured by the inertia of habits." Or as
William James expressed it, " Habit is the
enormous fly-wheel of society."

So here once more the question, at
bottom, is one of balance. Self-assertion
and discipline, progress and stability, each
is needed in its right proportion ; and to
find what is the right proportion, in all the

PRACTICAL ETHICS

infinite variety of occasions that present
themselves, is the daily problem of the
society and the individual, of citizen and
State.

138

CHAPTER X

SOME CURRENT QUESTIONS

" THERE are two sides to every ques-
tion " and this is very true, for the simple
reason that " a question " is that to which
there are two sides. When there are no
longer two sides there ceases to be a ques-
tion. And this constantly happens. It is
a mistake to suppose that the truth of
this saying implies that no question is ever
settled.

If a book such as this were being written
in England a hundred years ago, and if the
writer wished to discuss some of the issues
which then occupied the minds of thought-
ful and public-spirited people, he would
have to consider a number of matters
which are not topics of discussion to-day.
They are for us dead controversies ; the
arguments, the disputes, the passions they

PRACTICAL ETHICS

aroused are a matter of history. They are
settled questions.

We may take a few instances. The
duel a conspicuous example has been
already mentioned. A hundred years ago
people were still debating whether negro
slavery could be justified ; whether men
ought to be hanged if found guilty of
any one of a large variety of crimes besides
murder ; whether child offenders should
be sent to the ordinary prisons ; whether
discipline in the army and navy should
be maintained by flogging. It was still
an open question in all classes of society
whether drunkenness was to be regarded
as a vice or as an amiable foible, a matter
rather for laughter than for censure.
People argued whether it was better
that the children of the working-classes
should remain illiterate, or whether schools
ought to be provided for them. If they
were provided, would it be right for the
law to punish parents who sent their
children to work and not to school ?
Should Nonconformists be admissible to

140

SOME CURRENT QUESTIONS

the Universities ? And should burial in
the old churchyards be allowed to them ;
or should the law insist that they should
still be buried only in separate cemeteries ?
Ought a man to be excluded from Parlia-
ment because he was a Jew ? The nation
was just emerging from a bitter conflict
over the question whether political power
should be kept in the hands of the aristo-
cracy and the well-to-do, or should be
shared by the body of the nation. It was
still a matter of hot debate whether trade
unions should continue to be banned by
the law ; whether factory-owners and mine-
owners should have absolute control over
conditions of work, or whether the State
should intervene to secure safety, sanitary
conditions, reasonable hours of labour.
There had been a long controversy whether
the right way to deal with unemployed
workers was, or was not, to offer the
employers a subsidy in aid of wages if
they would employ them again. Ought
there to be a code of law to compel people
to take such measures in their own houses

141

PRACTICAL ETHICS

as were required in order to safeguard
public health ? It was discussed whether
marriage ought to be regarded as a con-
tract, terminable on certain grounds by
a judicial procedure, or as a sacrament,
and of such a kind as never to be revoc-
able ; whether married women should
be entitled to own property in their
own right ; whether women should be
admitted to the professions.

It is worth while to set out these in-
stances of what were then " questions "
but have ceased to be so, as a reminder
that progress may in fact be achieved ; as
an answer to the assertion sometimes made
that, in a community such as ours, there is
incessant talk with nothing accomplished ;
as a refutation of the shallow witticism
" plus a change, plus c'est la meme
chose."

Sometimes it may be necessary to reopen
some issue that had been regarded as
closed. A slip-back in moral standards in
a neighbouring country may, for example,
revive interest here in the question whether

142

SOME CURRENT QUESTIONS

duelling is right or wrong. Or the diffi-
culty of finding a solution to intractable
problems of unemployment may lead men
to ask whether, after all, some kind of
subsidy in aid of wages might not provide
the way. But, when all allowance is made
for such cases, it is clear that each genera-
tion inherits a vast body of law and of
custom which has been built up, piece by
piece, by the earlier generations, and which
is accepted as established. It is just for
that reason that it invites little attention.
Historians and students of history may go
into these things, but not the ordinary
men in ordinary course. He has to con-
cern himself with old issues that are still
unsettled, or with the new issues which
changed conditions have raised. As Pro-
fessor Schiller says, " It is precisely our
doubtful beliefs that loom so large in our
intellectual landscape, for it is upon these
that mental activity is actually engaged."
And this sometimes gives rise to the false
impression that all beliefs are doubtful,
that everything is still a " question " with

H3

PRACTICAL ETHICS

its two sides, either of which may perhaps
be right.

Morality is not static ; the vast pro-
cess goes on continually all over the
world through which the ethical code
evolves. By private and public discussion,
by political or religious controversy, by ex-
periment, men seek to find out, point by
point, in what it is that well-being really
consists and how to secure it. Our for-
bears a hundred years ago were called upon
to wrestle with the problems of their time,
and we in our time must wrestle with
ours.

Many of the problems that chiefly vex
our minds to-day are the outcome of the
invention of the steam-engine, of the elec-
tric motor and of the internal-combustion
engine, and arise out of the transformation
of industrial methods that has followed.
Our age has to cope with a vast series of
social questions, complex and difficult,
springing from the separation between
manual labour and the ownership of the

144

SOME CURRENT QUESTIONS

means of production. They are made
urgent by the fact that the people of a
hundred years ago admitted democracy,
and also laid the foundations of universal
education ; the classes directly concerned
have now political power and the know-
ledge to use it ; they insist that these
questions shall not be ignored or evaded.
The practical solution of the problems
is indeed the province of politics and
economics. But ethics has to set the
goal.

Is it right or is it wrong that vast numbers
of people, of character no worse than the
average, should live in poverty should not
have incomes enough to provide, for them-
selves and their families, the requirements
of physical health and comfort, with proper
opportunities for culture and recreation ?
If. it is held that this is morally wrong, for
the reason that such conditions are hostile
to well-being, then it is for the politician
and the economist to find the way of re-
dress. They must not choose their course
lightly, and so as to discover in the end

MS

PRACTICAL ETHICS

that they have in fact increased the evils
they set out to cure. They must be careful
not to frame their measures so that, by
lessening industrial enterprise and produc-
tivity and the facilities for the exchange
of goods, poverty is extended in one
direction as much as it is diminished
in another. But neither must they be
diverted by a care for individual or class
interests to the detriment of the general
interest.

Is it right or wrong that a community
should recognize and perpetuate class dis-
tinctions with different grades of educa-
tion, of income, of manners, possibly of
character ? Is luxury defensible on the
ground that to attain it gives an incentive
to effort, or on the ground that it makes
possible the emergence of new inventions
and conveniences which afterwards become
accessible generally ? Or is luxury, on
balance, to be condemned, for the reason
that it is demoralizing to those who are
surrounded by it, and offensive to the vast
majority who cannot share it ? If there is

146

SOME CURRENT QUESTIONS

to be a greater measure of social equality,
can this be reached by giving to youth an
equality of opportunity, educational and
industrial ? Or must that be supple-
mented by a levelling-down of wealth ?
In that event, must not society con-
sider one condition which is essential,
expressed by Matthew Arnold : " Many
are to be made partakers in well-being,
true ; but the ideal of well-being is
not to be, on that account, lowered and
coarsened " ?

Such are some of the questions, still
unsettled, which are posed by ethics.
According to the answers that are given,
the lines of political and economic action
will be determined.

There is another group, attracting much
attention in the present generation, which
belongs more definitely to the ethical field
the questions that are concerned with
the relations between the sexes.

Here again several causes have combined
in these days to compel attention. The
weakening of religious control among

PRACTICAL ETHICS

large classes of the population in most
countries has brought into the field of
discussion many matters and these
among them which had formerly been
looked upon as governed by ecclesias-
tical authority, according to rules which
were fixed. Secondly, the movement for
women's emancipation, successful over a
large part of the civilized world, and cul-
minating in the establishment of women
suffrage, has placed many of these questions
in a new aspect. Thirdly, the invention of
methods of birth control, and of steriliza-
tion, together with the importance which
social science attaches to eugenics, has
raised issues which did not formerly exist
at all. The modern world is confronted
with the problems whether the tradi-
tional attitude towards marriage should be
changed ; whether facilities for divorce
should be enlarged or should be restricted ;
what should be the attitude of public
opinion towards irregular unions and pros-
titution ; whether birth-control ought to
be stigmatized as immoral, or whether it

148

SOME CURRENT QUESTIONS

is the rejection of birth-control which is
immoral.

The answers to these and analogous
questions must largely depend upon the
view taken with respect to the family, as
an institution. This is a matter of imme-
diate and fundamental importance ; it
touches every home ; its handling may
have profound effects upon a nation's
character ; it demands a fuller and more
careful consideration than is often allowed
to it.

In primitive societies the grouping in
families is all-important. The family is
responsible collectively for the good con-
duct, and for the protection, of each of
its members. Where there are no police
and no magistrates this system is the only
preventive of crime and security for order,
It may still be seen in full vigour among,
for example, the migratory Beduin. In a
race easily roused to passion, if a man is
tempted to kill another, the only effective
restraint may be the certainty that the

149

PRACTICAL ETHICS

relatives of the murdered man would
sooner or later take revenge, by the
killing either of the murderer or of his
own relatives. The blood-feud is really
a protection for the peaceful against
the violent. It is based entirely upon
the family principle, and depends upon
that.

As civilization advances and the com-
munity becomes better organized, law-
courts and police-forces are established ;
other means of protection, less crude and
less unjust in their working, become avail-
able. The family ceases to be of essential
importance ; its maintenance is no longer
a matter of life and death. Ties are re-
laxed ; individuals drop away.

Further, in earlier times, and in more re-
cent times as well, the family was the only
refuge in disaster. For the vast majority
of mankind, life is full of insecurity. Sick-
ness, loss of employment, old age, may
bring anyone face to face with destitution.
The family is a simple system of mutual
insurance. The parents maintain the chil-

150

SOME CURRENT QUESTIONS

dren in their youth, and the children main-
tain the parents, if necessary, in their old
age. Every member of the family feels
himself one of a group, each of whom
recognizes a moral obligation to come to
the help of any other who may need it.
But in many countries of the modern world
a vast system has been devised of State
assistance, and of assistance through all
kinds of voluntary associations, which
lessens the need for family solidarity. The
individual finds his guarantee of security
more and more in the general com-
munity and less and less in the family
group.

The fact that vast numbers of people
spend their working lives, no longer in
domestic surroundings, but as units in
great agglomerations of workers in fac-
tories or mines, stores or offices, is another
influence in the same direction. The cus-
tom among the well-to-do classes of sending
their children away from home to boarding-
schools and universities tends the same
way. So it is that the idea of the family

PRACTICAL ETHICS

recedes into the background. Writers and
speakers on social issues usually start with
the assumption that they have to deal
with two primary factors the individual
and the State or community. They are
inclined to forget a third, which comes
between the family.

It needs no searching inquiry to show
that, even in the present-day world, the
institution of the family still has great
services to render services that are indeed
indispensable. With regard to the nur-
ture and training of children this is obvious.
A stable, tranquil, friendly home is the
right environment for childhood. There
can hardly be a happy childhood without
it. Psychological research reveals the pro-
found importance to adult character of the
influences that surround the child. And
later, the adolescent feels that in his family
he has a background ; a base from which
he can sally out into the world, and to
which, if need be, he can retreat. In
youth and in adult life each one feels that
he is not a solitary unit, confronted by

SOME CURRENT QUESTIONS

alien conditions that may sometimes be too
hard for him. No matter how complete
may be the systems which society provides
for assistance in times of difficulty, there is
still need for a helping hand, nearer and
more sympathetic, than any that can be
offered by a distant and impersonal social
organization. And men and women need
affection and companionship. They need
in fact all that is associated with the word
" home."

There is a further consideration, con-
necting directly with the discussions in the
previous chapters. Society has to find
some means of inducing its individual
members to act rightly when they are in-
clined to act wrongly. The influence of
public opinion is one means among others.
And the opinion of the family is a form
of public opinion. Its scale is small, but
on the other hand, acting at close range, it
may be very effective. The man without
family connections is deprived of a check
upon conduct which others find, from
time to time, of great value. It may be

PRACTICAL ETHICS

inconvenient, but it is a salutary in-
convenience.

Over that large part of the sphere of
conduct where police and law-courts do not
operate, mankind still lives in conditions
much the same as those of primitive com-
munities. We still have to resort some-
times to the principle of collective responsi-
bility. If one member of a family does a
dishonourable thing, all the others feel a
reflected disgrace. If one wins merited
distinction, the others feel a reflected glory.
And each person knows that this will be
so ; that there is a group of people, who
have been connected with him intimately
from his childhood, who are certain to feel
distress if he does ill, pride if he does well.
The solitary man loses both a restraint and
a stimulus. " The existence of each family
group," says Whitehead, " involves a mix-
ture of love, dependence, sympathy, per-
suasion, and compulsion."

The more the individual is accustomed
to identify himself with his family, and his
own interest with theirs, the more he will

'54

SOME CURRENT QUESTIONS

be ready to act on a long view rather than
on a short view. To induce him to do that
is the aim of morality. What Burke said
of the State is true also of the family ; it
is " a partnership not only between those
who are living, but between those who are
living, those who are dead, and those who
are to be born." A man who is tempted
to do wrongly has an additional motive
for refraining, if he feels that his conduct
will be a discredit to the traditions left by
his ancestors and a reproach to his descend-
ants. Family honour is a stand-by for
social morality.

History shows us that peoples which
have attained majesty and stability have
done so largely because of the strength
among them of the family system. It
was a principal foundation of the great-
ness of Rome, of the permanence of China,
of the efficiency of Japan. It was, and
still is, one of the main factors in such
successes as have been won by the Jewish
people.

Its claims, of course, are not absolute

PRACTICAL ETHICS

any more than the claims of the individual
or the claims of the community. All
three have to work in with one another.
There are countries in the East, in which
the idea of patriotism has been little
developed while the idea of family has
been powerful from times immemorial,
where public welfare suffers severely as
a consequence. Nepotism is rife in the
administration. When there is a conflict
between duty to the family and duty to
the public, the former is ranked first,
almost as a matter of course. And every-
where there are individual cases where the
plea of family obligation, pushed too far,
may destroy well-being ; cases of elderly
people who are parasitic on their children,
and suck their lives to nourish their own ;
or of young people who ruthlessly use their
relatives' sense of obligation to serve their
own pleasures. But it must be held that
normally, and rightly directed, the institu-
tion of the family is of fundamental
importance to individual and social
welfare.

156

SOME CURRENT QUESTIONS

This conclusion must be a leading factor
when we come to form judgements on
many of the questions, now widely de-
bated, which arise out of the relations
between the sexes. Stable marriage is, of
course, the essence of the family. A secure
home, a reliable affection, are only pos-
sible if there is a lasting companionship.
Unions, whether licit or illicit, lightly made
and lightly broken, cannot make for well-
being. And of forms of marriage, in those
countries where polygamy still prevails, it is
being increasingly recognized by thought-
ful men and women, that the system of
monogamy is the best.

If these views are sound, then those who
depreciate the institution of marriage, who
wish to see it weakened and perhaps ultim-
ately disappear, would be directing us to
the wrong path. The proper grounds for
divorce are a matter for close consideration,
and a large body of opinion in Great
Britain supports their extension ; but those
who would stretch them so wide that to
enter upon marriage would no longer be a

PRACTICAL ETHICS

grave act, but something to be undertaken
light-heartedly because easily revocable
are not necessarily, as they themselves sup-
pose, pioneers of progress.

The moral duty of choosing wife or
husband with due regard to the trans-
mission to the next generation of good
qualities, and the elimination of hereditary
taints, is closely connected with the ques-
tion of the family, but may be considered
more conveniently in a subsequent chapter.
There are economic questions that are
also connected ; particularly whether the
wage system ought to include an element
of " family allowances/' as is usual in
unemployment benefits or in the payments
to soldiers and to sailors in the navy.
This touches the conflict that exists in
the political and industrial sphere between
those who say that justice requires that
all employees, both men and women, should
be regarded as individuals and should re-
ceive equal pay for equal work ; and those
who say that justice requires that the in-

158

SOME CURRENT QUESTIONS

stitution of the family should be taken
into account, and that men workers, who
usually have responsibility for maintaining
a family, should receive from society a
larger income than women workers, who
usually have not. But to discuss this
would carry us outside the scope of this
book.

Many examples might be given of other
questions under debate nowadays, which
raise ethical issues but which also extend
into other more specialized domains. How
far does the penal law still stand in need
of reform, so as to make it conform with
modern ideas of humanity without leading
to an increase of crime ? The principle of
the sacredness of all human life having
been much shaken by the Great Wars and
the accompanying increase in many kinds
of violence, ought a deliberate effort to be
made to reassert it as a universal rule ?
Is suicide to be condemned in all cases
without exception, and if not, what
should be the exceptions ? The growth of
irrational superstition in the present day

PRACTICAL ETHICS

attracts attention ; is this to be accepted
as quaint and amusing, or condemned as
demoralizing ? Is gambling to be re-
garded as a harmless recreation or as a
vice ? How far are the questions it raises
to be considered as personal, and how far
as social ? Is " art for art's sake " a sound
rule for the artist to follow ; or must
art, as well as science and all other forms
of human activity, take its due place in a
co-ordinated system of life ? To what ex-
tent is it a duty to promote social ameni-
ties ? Ought it to be regarded as immoral
to build an ugly house ? What is to be
said about the intrusion of advertisement,
the spoiling of the beauty of the country-
side ? And about the infliction of unneces-
sary noise ? How far should society try
to secure that the influence of the Press, of
literature, of the theatre, the cinema, broad-
casting, should be wholesome and not
harmful ? And should this be done, if at
all, only through public opinion ? Or
should law be invoked, and if so, to what
extent ?

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SOME CURRENT QUESTIONS

If another book such as this comes
to be written a hundred years from now,
I wonder how many of these questions
will then be regarded as settled and
settled rightly.

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CHAPTER XI

THE NATION AND THE WORLD

MORE momentous and more urgent
than any other moral issue under debate
in our age is the question whether a
nation has any duties to other nations,
and if it has, in what they consist.

" Among uncivilized races intra- tribal
theft is carefully distinguished from extra-
tribal theft. Whilst the former is for-
bidden, the latter is commonly allowed,
and robbery committed on a stranger is
an object of praise." Is this right or
wrong ? And does it differ in any essen-
tial from the principle still maintained in
many countries, that a State has no duties
except to its own members, and need not
scruple to make war upon other peoples
if it thinks that it is in its own interest to
do so ?

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THE NATION AND THE WORLD

This is the doctrine known in Italy
as " il sacro egoismo nazionale." It is the
doctrine of Fichte : " Always," he said,
" without exception, the most civilized
State is the most aggressive." It is the
doctrine of Treitschke, for many years a
leading professor in the University of
Berlin, who wrote : " War will endure to
the end of history. The laws of human
thought and of human nature forbid any
alternative, neither is one to be wished
for." It is the creed of Nietzsche :
" Man," he said, " shall be trained for
war, and woman for the recreation of the
warrior ; all else is folly." It is the creed
of militarism always and everywhere. It
is the greatest peril that faces the modern
world.

When it is said that this view is im-
moral, its advocates answer that the State
need have no concern with morality.
" The State," says Hegel, " is the divine
idea as it exists on earth." " It is," he
says again, " the absolute power on earth :
it is its own end and object. It is the

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

ultimate end which has the highest right
against the individual/* " Hegel permits
the State, as the highest expression of
social morality, to escape from any moral

restrictions."

If it is said that this view is irrational,
because in the long run it works
injury both to the particular State itself
and to its neighbours, it is answered that
there is no need to be rational. That is
merely " modern intellectualism." Emo-
tion should be the stimulus, intuition the
guide and force the instrument. If, in-
deed, importance is attached to " wel-
fare," this school holds that welfare is
not to be found in material comfort or
in the pleasures of mind or spirit ; it is
to be found only in the " will-to-power/'
in struggle and in victory. When it is
asked why these doctrines should be
accepted, an answer is refused. " It is
so ; and if you do not accept them you
shall be conquered by those who do."
Such an attitude obviously takes the whole
subject of social action outside the range

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THE NATION AND THE WORLD

of discussion. It is no more possible on
that basis to consider intelligently any
question of national or international
politics than it would be to argue about
the desirability of law and order with a
gangster armed with a machine-gun. But
law and order may be desirable, none the
less.

The basis of this school of thought is
the Hegelian doctrine of the reality and
supremacy of " The State/' This doctrine
itself rests on nothing but an arbitrary and
unconvincing assertion. " The State " is
no more a reality apart from a people
than a swarm is a reality apart from the
bees. It is the fact that men, like bees,
have an innate tendency to co-operate,
but this does not confer " reality " upon
the forms which they may adopt to that
end. The State, as has already been
urged, is nothing but a number of men
and women organized for certain purposes
of common action. Any metaphysical
doctrine of the State as "an entity real
in its own right " can be no other than

165

PRACTICAL ETHICS

a delusion. And we can find no reason
for thinking that the men and women,
when they act together as a community,
can have any different morality from that
which they accept when they act separ-
ately as individuals.

Leaving now that extreme expression of
the militarist creed, we come to those who
do not hold it as avowedly non-moral and
non-rational, but would offer a defence for
it on ethical and rational grounds. Several
defences are offered.

It is said that international conflicts evoke
supreme efforts, unlimited self-sacrifice,
qualities of heroism ; they give a great
impetus to efficiency ; they stir mankind
from sloth. This is certainly true. But
we must ask at what cost ? And is there
no other way ? We do not set fire to our
houses in order that the firemen may
show their bravery, or wreck our ships
to give opportunities to the lifeboatmen.
The immeasurable physical suffering, the
anguish of mind, the devastating economic

1 66

THE NATION AND THE WORLD

ruin, which are the features of modern
war, far outweigh in the scales of human
welfare any such benefits. Nor have eras
of peace been the least fruitful in material
and intellectual gains. The seething
activities of modern life give ample scope
for all the virtues. Men may touch moral
greatness elsewhere than on the battle-
field. It is not in this plea that we can
find a justification for war.

Evolution is said to offer one. War is to
be regarded as nature's way of eliminating
the unfit and ensuring progress. Plants
and animals are engaged in a constant
struggle for existence ; nations make war
upon one another ; it is assumed that the
one process is analogous to the other. A
brief reference was made in the first
chapter of this book to the relation of the
principle of evolution to morals in general ;
but it is desirable here to draw attention
to some further considerations.

War, in the modern world, does not
exterminate. If it did, war might perhaps
receive some sort of sanction from biology.

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

But ruthlessness cannot now be carried to
that point. Not even a Treitschke would
assert that the ideal nation was one that
had not scrupled to destroy physically
every other. Unless, however, the less
fit are exterminated they will continue to
survive, side by side with the fitter. Con-
sider the many wars that have been waged
in Europe and Asia during the last hun-
dred years . In which of them has the result
borne any resemblance to the replacement
of one species by another such as takes
place in nature ?

That replacement is not brought about
by events that are in any way akin to
human warfare. It is the result of com-
petition or conflict between individuals,
not of battles between opposing forces.
As Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell says,
" One species is not supposed to advance
in serried ranks against another, wolves
against bears, eagles against vultures,
firs against beeches, and so forth. The
competition is internal, amongst the in-
dividuals of a species.^

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THE NATION AND THE WORLD

So far as a war has any biological effect
upon the survival of the fittest it is usually
unfavourable rather than favourable.
Both in the nation that is successful and
in the one that is defeated, numbers of
the fittest are killed off. The method,
approved by this theory as nature's means
of raising physical standards, in practice
results in the disappearance of some
thousands, or millions, as the case may
be, of the strongest and bravest. Let the
process only be repeated often enough,
and populations of old men, cripples, and
women would survive as evidence of the
value of war in promoting virility.

And here more than ever the fallacy
is plain of supposing that " fittest to
survive " is the same as " best/' Even
if it were the case, which it clearly is not,
that war eliminated the defeated, the out-
come would be merely the survival of
those who had shown themselves the best
fitted to conquer. They, no doubt, would
regard this as proof of an all-round superi-
ority. But that is by no means self-

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

evident. Ability to conquer is one thing ;
a high place in the human scale may be
another. When the Tartars or the Turks
swept over great portions of the civilized
world, it is far from certain that progress
was served. Evolution through war may
encourage and establish a fitness merely
of barbarism. If in any country all the
restraints of morality and of law were
abolished and social relations were left to
be settled by ruthless brute force, those
who were the fittest to cope with the new
conditions would no doubt survive and
become predominant. But they would
not be the best. They would be those
whom we now call criminals. It is no
different with nations.

Sometimes the argument drawn from
evolution takes another form. It is said
that war is not indeed part of a biological
process, but that it is part of the process
by which ideas compete with one another,
by which social organizations are tested
and the character of peoples is put to the
proof ; through the conflict, the best

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THE NATION AND THE WORLD

among these become predominant, and
by this means the world advances. But
in this form the argument has no connec-
tion with natural evolution and can claim
no support from the authority of science.
The process is not biological but social ;
the competing units are not physical
organisms but ideas or characteristics ;
the outcome is not survival and replace-
ment but predominance and influence.
Darwinism has nothing to do with it.
The issue is reduced to simple questions
of fact : Does war promote the influence
and diffuse the methods of the more pro-
gressive peoples ? If so, does the advan-
tage outweigh the cost ? Are there other
less costly ways of achieving the same
result ? Each person will answer these
questions according to his own reading of
history and his own deductions from the
experience of our times. The more far-
sighted will, I believe, give the answers
that in some directions war has proved
to be a stimulus ; that, here again, the
enormous losses in other directions far

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

outweigh the gain ; that different and
better modes exist for ensuring the spread
throughout the world of useful ideas,
methods and characteristics.

The advocate of the other view may
raise a specific case and ask whether this
can hold good where an inferior race
occupies a vast territory to the exclusion
of a superior. Would it have been to
the advantage of mankind, for example,
to have left the whole of America north
of Mexico, to the half-million of Red
Indians, who were the only occupants
four centuries ago of that area ; or the
whole of Australia to the 150,000 of
Black-fellows who were there at the end
of the eighteenth centuiy ? A candid
answer can only be that it would not
have been to their advantage. The ter-
ritories were far more extensive than
those populations needed. They could
not put them to the best use, measured
by the results to human welfare. So also
it was not defensible that in a newly
colonized country a small number of the

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THE NATION AND THE WORLD

settlers should monopolize, for themselves
and their descendants, vast areas of cultiv-
able land. Laws to ensure closer settle-
ment were held to be justified in Australia
and New Zealand, for example, the original
settlers being allotted such compensation
as was considered fair. If they had
refused to submit, the law would have
compelled them. In such cases the con-
flict of interest has been between people
of the same race. The moral position is
essentially the same when the conflict has
been between people of different races.
The real question that arises in connec-
tion with European settlement, in America
and Australia and elsewhere, is not whether
it was justified in itself, but whether
its methods were right and the treatment
of the aborigines was fair. In general,
the special case of colonization does not
support the militarist philosophy of the
advantage to mankind of recurring war.
The advocate has one further argument,
usually regarded as the strongest. Always,
he says, there have been wars, and, in

PRACTICAL ETHICS

spite of the efforts of amiable idealists,
there probably always will be. They
spring from causes deep-rooted in human
nature, and human nature does not change.
The fact may be regrettable, but it is a
fact none the less. And since wars, he
says, are sure to come in the future, no
matter what we in our own country may
do, it is as well to take measures before-
hand to ensure that, when they come,
our own country shall not lose but shall
profit. Some would add that it is as
well to take any favourable opportunity
to forestall the possible launching of war
by others, by initiating it ourselves. And
as the citizen of each country usually
shares the common vanity of thinking
that his own people, their customs and
ideas, are the best of any, he will satisfy
his conscience by believing that in the
long run such a policy will work out to
the general advantage.

In every theatre of action in all times
such voices have been heard. Had they
been listened to we might still be in the

THE NATION AND THE WORLD

conditions of the Stone Age. Certainly
we should still be practising piracy on
the sea and slave-raiding on land ; sacri-
ficing on our altars the enemies we had
captured in incessant tribal fighting, or
being sacrificed on the altars of the
enemy gods. We may be sure that each
of these customs had its defenders in
its day, and that each was claimed to
be a natural practice, which always had
existed and always would. If anyone
were now to seek to restore those customs,
he would be regarded as not less mad
than the reformers were doubtless regarded
who were the first, in some distant age,
to dream of destroying them. Human
nature, after all, is not something mysteri-
ous, extraneous and fixed ; it is nothing
else than our own nature, our own
opinions and habits, and the opinions and
habits of other men and women not very
different from ourselves. We know, from
the reading of history and from observa-
tion, that these are open to change ;
slowly, perhaps, and reluctantly, but still

PRACTICAL ETHICS

open to change. So also with regard to
the impulse to war.

The history of England records that,
during the period of 126 years from 1689
to 1815, the country was at war, against
peoples of European race, in sixty-three of
those years exactly one year in every two.
Then there came a change of ideas, a
change of constitution and a change in the
principles of British foreign policy, and
in the ninety-nine years between 1815
and 1914 there were five years of war and
ninety-four years of peace. Human nature
presumably remained much the same. Yet
wars, such as in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries were regarded as
" inevitable/' were found in the nine-
teenth century not to be so. Nor are we
obliged to say that, because the Great
Wars did in fact take place, they therefore
could not have been avoided by greater
wisdom and goodwill in those quarters
where they had been lacking. Man is
not so weak a creature that he need wait
passively for the outbreak of other wars ;

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THE NATION AND THE WORLD

helplessly cowering under the advancing
shadow of some sinister " Necessity/'
There is no " Necessity." There is only
ourselves, and our own will-to-peace or
will-to-war. Those who say that wars
are inevitable, and who act accordingly,
are themselves the cause which may make
them so.

It may be asked, What is the bearing of
principles such as these upon the idea of
Patriotism ? Always regarded hitherto as
among the chief of the virtues, is
patriotism still to be so regarded ? Or
is it to be looked upon as inseparably
connected with militarism, and therefore
to be condemned ?

The individual man, in his relations
with his neighbours, is moved by two
main influences, self-interest and sym-
pathy ; rightly directed, each helps the
other ; morality consists in maintaining
a due balance between them. When he
is acting as a citizen, sharing in directing
the policy of a country, the position can

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

be no different. Persons combined to-
gether as a nation have duties to them-
selves in that capacity, just as individually
they have duties to themselves as indi-
viduals. And they have also, as members
of the nation, duties to their neighbours,
of the same order as the individual's duties
to his neighbours. For ethics, the con-
ception of neighbour cannot be limited
to those who live within the same political
frontiers ; no valid reason can be given
for doing so. Both egoism and altruism,
therefore, have their part to play where
nations are the units, as where persons
are the units. And here also each, rightly
directed, helps the other. To raise the
standards of civilization in one's own
country helps the well-being of the world ;
and the greater the well-being of the world,
the better for one's own country. Inter-
national morality consists neither in a
complete sacrifice of national interest for
the sake of international, nor in the
ignoring of international interest for the
sake of national, but in the right balance

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THE NATION AND THE WORLD

between them. Patriotism ranks as a
virtue when, and only when, it conforms
to this fundamental rule.

The revulsion from militarism leads
some thinkers to condemn the idea of
country altogether ; they would discard
it in favour of a complete cosmopolitanism.
But they forget valid facts on the other
side.

The world, with its two thousand
millions of inhabitants, is obviously too
vast and too varied to be ruled as one
state. If only for convenience of govern-
ment it must be divided into political
units. That being so, each unit should
be of such a kind that service is enlisted,
self-sacrifice is evoked, cohesion and
stability are maintained. To that end
affection and enthusiasm will powerfully
contribute ; and all history shows that
the spirit of patriotism is the most potent
agent in inspiring those emotions.

Secondly, the existence of national
units, in between the individual and
mankind, meets a psychological need.

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

u Patriotism/' as Karl Pearson said, " seems
to be based on the reasonable acknowledge-
ment of two facts in our nature : that we
owe a duty to our fellow-men, and that
we cannot adequately perform it to the
race at large." Nationality puts the aver-
age man into touch with something which
is greater than himself, yet not too vast
and too complex for his imagination easily
to grasp. To destroy it would leave a void.
The world's variety, again, is a good thing
in itself. It adds to the true wealth of
mankind. If all the peoples were moulded
to a single pattern, life would be the
poorer. It is fortunate that there still
exist these differences of characteristics,
transmitted to us from diverse origins and
through diverse histories. So long as the
characteristics are not harmful in them-
selves they should be cherished, for the
sake of their very diversity. Nationality
is the chief preserver of distinctive qualities
and customs, institutions and literatures,
arts and crafts. It saves the world from
a flat and dull uniformity.

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THE NATION AND THE WORLD

Lastly, separate countries do in fact
exist ; some of them have been animated
by the philosophy of militarism, and may
be again. In this situation, what should
be the attitude of the other countries ?
Because they condemn force, must they
passively acquiesce in the domination of
the world, themselves included, by those
who do not condemn force, but who are
ready to use it ? Must their very hatred
of militarism bring them to surrender to
militarism ? "It must be remembered/ 5
said Dean Inge, " that, in spite of the pro-
verb, it takes in reality only one to make
a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to
pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism,
while the wolf remains of a different
opinion." With the world as it is, self-
defence is a duty, and to inspire that
defence patriotism is the stimulus.

I have suggested that egoism and
altruism, each in its measure, serve one
another, among peoples as among indi-
viduals ; but this has not been the

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

accepted opinion. Nationalism and inter-
nationalism have been regarded as mutu-
ally exclusive. " All cannot be happy at
once/' said Sir Thomas Browne, " for
the glory of one state depends upon
the ruin of another. " And Voltaire ex-
pressed the current view when he said,
" Such is the condition of human affairs,
that to wish for the greatness of one's
own country, is to wish for the harm of
its neighbours."

If this has ever been true, it is certainly
not true in the modern world. We know
from the clear lessons of experience that
an active international commerce increases
the wealth of all countries and the comfort
of their peoples. The exchange of ideas
in religion and philosophy, science and
art, medicine, law and industry, benefits
all who participate. All share in the risks,
and in the consequences, of war. Man-
kind is inter-dependent as never before.
Each country prospers best in a prosperous
world. The ruin of one is not the glory
of another but its loss, and the level of

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THE NATION AND THE WORLD

civilization anywhere depends upon the
level of civilization everywhere.

Egoism unbalanced by altruism hurts
the egoist himself, whether he be a person
or a State. It degrades his own moral
character, and leads to actions which his
conscience must condemn ; with loss of
self-respect comes loss of effectiveness.
And it is certain to provoke resentment in
others. A country which seeks only its
own aggrandizement arouses abroad a
general hostility, which sooner or later, as
all history shows, will bring it to disaster.
An aggressive patriotism does not serve
the ends of patriotism, and so is not
patriotism at all.

Any sound system of ethics must con-
demn war. It is self-evident that, directly,
warfare does not promote welfare, for its
methods are death and destruction. Such
advantages as it may bring indirectly
cannot be shown to outweigh its essential
evils. How it is to be prevented ; what
better methods can be provided for settling

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

disputes between nations ; how antagon-
isms between races are to be avoided ; by
what machinery world order can be sub-
stituted for world anarchy these are
political questions. They are outside the
scope and the capacity of philosophy.
But it is for philosophy to show to
mankind why the ideas of the militarist,
which claim a philosophic foundation, are
wrong.

By militarist, let it be repeated, is not
meant one who is ready to take up arms
for the protection of his country when
attacked, or who is willing to risk his life,
if need be, to defend liberty or to penalize
aggression. For such no tribute of grati-
tude can be too great. By militarist is
meant one who holds the creed that a
State has the right to pursue its own
aggrandizement by force regardless of the
well-being of any other State ; who glori-
fies war for its own sake, and regards
greatness as identical with conquest.
Whoever holds that view adopts, in the
community of nations, the same position

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THE NATION AND THE WORLD

morally as the criminal adopts in the social
community, and the public opinion of the
world should not hesitate to declare him
such.

185

CHAPTER XII

MEN AND ANIMALS

BEFORE we proceed to our conclusions,
there still remains to be considered an im-
portant group of questions, quite separate
from those discussed in the preceding
chapters. They are the questions that
arise from the relations between men and
animals.

It will not at first sight be clear how
these are to be connected with our original
starting-point. We defined good actions
as those that conduced to welfare, and we
defined welfare as consisting of a great
variety of " goods, " all of which served, in
one way or another, to promote human
well-being. But what of animal well-
being ? Are we to say that that is outside
the purview of ethics ; that there is no
reason why we need consider at all the

186

MEN AND ANIMALS

happiness or the suffering of any kind of
animal ; that we should feel free to inflict
upon them, with complete indifference, any
degree of pain ? That would certainly not
fit our conceptions of morality ; it would
conflict with all our ideas of " goodness."
If our first principle led to that as its
conclusion, the principle itself would have
to be rejected.

There are some who, starting from a
basis of intuition or of sovereign conscience,
declare that animals have " rights " ; that
these are fundamental, and on a par with
those of men ; that " both are equally
God's creatures," and that it is for that
reason that consideration is due to animals.
I do not think that our original proposition
is open to the objection stated ; nor that
this alternative can be sustained.

It cannot be sustained, first because of
the insecure foundation which intuition
offers for morality ; this point has already
been discussed. Secondly, the idea of
" rights " is itself unsound ; a claim of
right rests merely upon assertion, and can

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

be met by counter-assertion ; we did not
admit a theory of " the natural rights of
man," we can admit even less a theory
of the natural rights of animals. And,
thirdly, if accepted with sincerity and
applied with consistency, this alternative
principle must lead to results that would
be disastrous in practice.

If animals have equal rights with men
because they are equally God's creatures,
then it must be as wrong, morally, to take
the life of an animal as it would be to
take the life of a man. All conscious life
must be regarded as sacred. This is the
position taken by certain sects of Hindus.
It cannot be limited to the higher animals
to the mammals, or even to the verte-
brates ; the principle itself allows us no
ground for any such distinction. It would
involve that if, for example, a whole coun-
try is faced with famine through the threat-
ened destruction of its crops by an invasion
of locusts, the human population must not
defend itself by destroying the locusts. It
would involve surrendering our houses to

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MEN AND ANIMALS

the mice and the cockroaches, our food
to the ants and the flies, our beds to the
fleas, and our fields to the birds and the
rabbits. But if this extreme view is re-
jected as absurd, then the principle itself
goes with it. Animal rights are no longer
regarded as absolute. Human welfare is
admitted as a factor.

The question then becomes a different
one whether it is to be the only factor ;
or whether there is to be a kind of balance,
in which human well-being and animal
well-being are to be regarded as equally
valid fundamentally ; and are to be weighed
one against the other, on some scale of
values. I can see no logical basis for such
a proposition, which is really the doctrine
of " abstract rights " in a slightly different
form. Nor is it necessary to have recourse
to it, for the objection raised against our
original principle does not hold.

It is not the case that to connect the
idea of goodness, or right conduct, with
human well-being involves the exclusion

PRACTICAL ETHICS

of animal well-being. And this is not only
because many animals are useful to man,
and the better they are treated the greater
will be his advantage. That reason is valid
so far as it goes, but it would be quite
inadequate. It would permit any degree
of cruelty to non-domestic animals, or in
the slaughtering of animals for food, or in
many other ways. There is another and
a wider reason. It was expressed by Kant
when he said, " Violence and cruelty to
animals is quite contrary to the duty of
man to himself/'

The reason is, as Kant pointed out, that
" thereby sympathy with the sufferings of
animals is blunted in man." The motive
of sympathy, the emotion of pity, are
themselves elements in human character,
the development of which make for man's
good ; practices which blunt them are pro
tanto bad ; unless they are adopted for the
sake of some greater good of a different
kind, they must be accounted wrong.

Nor may the individual man claim that
his actions in this sphere are a matter for

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MEN AND ANIMALS

his own judgement. If someone might
say the animal has no abstract rights of
its own, and if he himself does not happen
to feel sympathy or pity in the particular
case, it is not the concern of anyone else
whether he does or does not commit what
others may choose to call an act of cruelty.
But the matter is not solely individual. It
raises social issues. A man who treats an
animal cruelly not only degrades his own
character, and thereby makes himself a less
valuable member of the community, but
also, if it is known, offends the feelings of
numbers of other people, and so commits
an anti-social act. " Cruelty to animals, "
as Professor Ritchie said, " is rightly sup-
posed to be an offence against humanitarian
feeling. Our duty to the animals is a
duty to the human society. It is an offence
against civilized life to cause any unneces-
sary suffering, or to do any unnecessary
damage ' unnecessary ' meaning unneces-
sary for human well-being/'

Humanitarianism has developed rapidly
in modern times, and it is easy to see the

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

causes. Primitive man felt himself in con-
stant danger from the animal world, and
at the same time he largely depended for
his food on attacks upon it, in which almost
every male took part. Life was spent in a
constant mutual hostility. The position
still remains much the same in countries
untouched by civilization ; but elsewhere
the control of man is now so complete
that this reason for antipathy has dis-
appeared. There remains an exception
with regard to creatures which are classed
as " vermin/' because they are still a source
of injury.

Secondly, the establishment of the prin-
ciple of natural evolution has had effects
upon the feelings of mankind towards the
rest of the animate world. On the one
hand, some have been influenced in their
ideas by the fuller revelation of the ruth-
less preying of one species upon another ;
they may have been disposed to say, if
nature is " red in tooth and claw/' why
need man be so squeamish ? But on the
other hand, this has been far outweighed

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MEN AND ANIMALS

by the general sense of the civilized world
which refuses to accept the law of the
sea, the swamp and the jungle as its own
moral standard. And the discovery that
man is not the product of a special act
of creation and separate in kind from the
lower animals, but is allied to them physi-
cally and in some degree mentally, has given
rise to a certain sense of kinship, and
with it to a feeling of greater sympathy.
Westermarck, in his Origin and Develop-
ment of the Moral Ideas, lays stress upon
this ; and he adds the further point, " apart
from any theory as regards human origins,
growing reflection has also taught men to
be more considerate in their treatment of
animals by producing a more vivid idea of
their sufferings. "

And the increasing complexity of modern
society has brought with it the practical
need for new rules of social conduct ; this
in turn makes it necessary to emphasize
the duties of the individual to the com-
munity, and this renders it essential to
foster the motive of sympathy. The aee

PRACTICAL ETHICS

is compelled to stress our duties to our
fellow-citizens, to all our fellow-men. The
same impulse which has intensified the
humanitarian spirit has also widened its
scope. The effect of the impulse has not
stopped at the boundaries of the human
race, it embraces the animal world also ;
and the wanton infliction of any suffering
anywhere has come to be banned by
the more sensitive conscience of modern
man.

The change of view in modern times
compared with ancient may be illustrated
from the custom of animal sacrifice. No
one who would seek to initiate a religious
movement nowadays could possibly per-
suade the general body of opinion that the
killing of animals as part of a ceremonial
could have any religious value. Such a
practice would be regarded, on the
contrary, as fatal to genuine religious
emotion.

If these principles are sound, each person
will try to apply them, according to the

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MEN AND ANIMALS

best judgement he can form of the facts, in
each actual case that presents itself. He
has to decide whether it is ever right, and
if so in what circumstances, to make use of
animals for labour, for food, for adorn-
ment, for sport, or for purposes of scientific
research. Acute controversies have arisen
on some of these points. The subject of
vivisection is a conspicuous instance, and
we may briefly consider it as an example.
With vivisection is to be included in-
oculations of animals by research workers,
causing pain or disease.

Here it is necessary first of all to estab-
lish the facts. Is it, or is it not, the case
that vivisection has assisted the develop-
ment of medicine and surgery in the past,
and is there reason to expect that it will
do so in the future ? If the answer is
negative, then the practice clearly cannot
be justified ; for man would be causing
suffering to animals without benefit to
them or to himself. But if the answer
is in the affirmative, then it may be a
choice between, on the one hand, inflicting

PRACTICAL ETHICS

suffering, during the periods of research,
upon a number of mice or guinea-pigs, or
other animals, and, on the other hand,
leaving various human diseases unpre-
vented and uncured. In that case there
would be involved sufferings as great, or
perhaps much greater, on the part of a
far larger number of more sensitive beings
over the whole future of the human race.
There is little doubt which choice would
be the more humane. But whether the
facts themselves will support the one view
or the other is in dispute ; if anyone is to
form an opinion on the main issue he is
clearly under an obligation to ascertain to
the best of his ability to which conclusion
they point. It is common ground in any
case that, if vivisection is to be practised
at all, avoidable suffering should always
be obviated by insisting upon the use of
anaesthetics wherever practicable, and by
the imposition of such other conditions as
the case may require.

The baiting, the chasing or the killing
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MEN AND ANIMALS

of animals for the amusement of men and
women raises, of course, different con-
siderations. In England, for many cen-
turies, setting dogs to fight bulls or bears,
or setting cocks to fight each other, were
popular sports. They came to be offensive
to public feeling, and Parliament enacted
laws which suppressed them. Similar laws
have been passed in almost all civilized
states ; bull-fighting in the Spanish-speak-
ing countries is a conspicuous exception.
There the predominant public opinion
holds that the display of courage and
grace, of agility and skill on the part of
the bull-fighters, and the interest and ex-
citement aroused among the spectators,
more than justify the suffering inflicted
upon the bulls and the horses. The effect
of the spectacle upon the character of the
nation itself does not yet appear to be
taken into serious account ; just as the
Romans did not realize the effect upon
their own characters of the gladiatorial
games. It will be for the Spanish-
speaking peoples to decide whether the

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

public exhibition of animals, unable to
escape, being goaded to charge at men
and to gore horses, and finally being
killed in the sight of the audience
whether such exhibitions, whatever may
be the pomp and circumstance of their
ceremonial, are consistent with a worthy
civilization.

How far considerations of a similar order
apply to other sports in other countries ;
how far distinctions should be drawn be-
tween sports that involve animals of com-
paratively high mental development such
as deer, foxes and hares, and those that
affect fishes ; whether it is legitimate for
civilized man to give vent to the primi-
tive hunting instinct, in cases where the
animals would in any event be killed,
either to supply food or because they
are dangerous or destructive ; whether
the training of animals of various kinds
to perform tricks in circuses is open
to reasonable objection these are some
of the matters now in general debate.
And there is in addition the wider issue

MEN AND ANIMALS

raised by vegetarianism. The application
of general principles to such specific
cases is the office of public opinion and
private judgement.

199

CHAPTER XIII

CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION

DURING thousands of millions of years
this earth has been in the making. Over a
period of millions of years various forms of
living beings have developed. Man slowly
emerged many hundreds of thousands of
years ago. Civilization has arisen within
the last few thousands. Now we, of the
living generation, take our place in the
procession of the ages. But there is one
difference between our times and all the
times, remote or near, that have preceded.
There is now, as never before, a race of
beings on this planet which is aware of
part at least of the cosmic process.

The sciences, with infinite pains, have
revealed how the present has been evolved
out of the past. Although so many things
are still unknown ; although the sciences

200

CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION

have hardly touched the fringe of the
problems of existence itself, of life and
mind, and of the Cause moving in the
universe, still we perceive, at least in
part, the method that pervades the whole.
Glimpses had been caught of it, in earlier
times, by some precursors in the realm
of thought ; but only in our own era has
it been made manifest, for the guidance of
all mankind.

And, little by little, man has been building
up the record of his own experience. He
is now able, if he will, to draw the lessons.
He may learn, if he will, how his civiliza-
tion has grown what has helped it and
what has hindered. The development of
language, of writing, of printing, has made
possible the record itself, and its trans-
mission from one generation to another.
Libraries are the collective memory of
mankind. We have at hand the materials
for our own instruction.

There has always been evolution.
Henceforth there may be Conscious Evolu-
tion.

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

From the beginning, living creatures
have indeed helped their own develop-
ment. " It is bad biology to think of the
struggling organisms as necessarily like
fishes in a net ; they often share in their
own evolution, selecting their environment,
for instance, as well as being selected by
it." And this, of course, holds true especi-
ally of human beings. But no creature
other than man can share in the process
of evolution with deliberate intention, and
man has become able to do so only
now. The moulding of our destinies
hitherto has been mainly at the hands of
what Professor Whitehead calls " senseless
agencies."

In his notable book, Adventures of Ideas,
Whitehead summarizes his account of the
process in the following passage : " We
have here history on its senseless side, with
its transitions pushed forward either by
rainfall and trees, or by brute barbarians,
or by coal, steam, electricity and oil.
Yet even the senseless side of history re-
fuses to accept its own proper category

202

CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION

of sheer senselessness. The rainfall and
the trees are items in a majestic order
of nature ; Attila's Huns had their own
intellectual point of view in some respects
surprisingly preferable to that of the de-
generate Romans ; the age of coal and
steam was pierced through and through
by the intellectual abilities of particular
men who urged forward the transition.
But finally, with all this qualification, rain-
fall and Huns and steam-engines represent
brute necessity, as conceived in Greek
thought, urging forward mankind apart
from any human conception of an end
intellectually expressed. Fragmentary in-
tellectual agencies co-operated blindly to
turn apes into men, to turn the classic
civilization into mediaeval Europe, to over-
whelm the Renaissance by the Industrial
Revolution. Men knew not what they
did."

Amazing has been the advance by
methods so fortuitous. " A blind man
may hit the target ; but how many arrows
wasted ! " The advance may be swifter

203

PRACTICAL ETHICS

and more assured now that we have begun
to know its conditions.

Embarking upon this great new enter-
prise of conscious evolution, we need
to guard ourselves against certain errors.
It has been thought that, in evolution,
" Nature " has given us a " law," and
that our conscious part in the process, if
any, can only be to discover what its pro-
visions really are, and to hasten to fall
in with them. Much confusion has arisen
from the fact that the word " law " is
used in two quite different senses one
in scientific writings, the other in everyday
life. The Law of Gravity, for example, or
the Law of the Conservation of Energy,
or the Law of Evolution, are not in the
nature of commands ; these are simply de-
scriptive names for processes, or sequences
of events ; they have nothing in common
with a moral law, such as " Thou shalt
not steal, " or with the laws framed by
statesmen and legislatures, and enforced
by penalties. From a theological point of

204

CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION

view the methods of nature may indeed be
considered as ordinances ; but not from
the standpoint of science. " Evolution is
often regarded as a sort of force, instead of
as the merely descriptive conception which
it is. If there is an active unity behind
evolution, it is something inferred, but not
observed." Man's share in the matter is
not limited to watching himself being
evolved by the " senseless agencies " ; his
conscious participation does not consist
merely in having ascertained the principles
by which those agencies act. He has a
contribution of his own to make, and it
may be made deliberately. It may be
framed of set purpose so as to work in
with, or to modify, what is termed " the
natural law."

A second misconception arises from a
strange theory that human history moves
in cycles ; that nations, like individual
organisms, pass through stages of growth,
maturity, decadence and death, so that
our efforts, however deliberate, must con-
form to that fundamental rule, or else be

205

PRACTICAL ETHICS

doomed to futility. No valid ground can
be offered for any such belief. Ingenious
philosophers, anxious to formulate striking
generalizations, have given a plausible air
to the theory by judicious selection of
historical instances which seem to support
it, and by equally judicious omission of
those that do not ; but any close analysis
will show that it is a superficial plausibility
and nothing more. There is in the his-
tory of human affairs no proof of any
geometrical movement whatever whether
circular or spiral or rectilinear. Nor is it
the case that the influences affecting nations
are the same as those which determine the
life -cycle of organisms. An analogy can
no doubt be drawn between certain features
in the organization of a society and cer-
tain features in a physical organism, as
Herbert Spencer pointed out in a well-
known essay. But to say that a nation
is in fact an organism, and therefore subject
to quasi-physiological processes, can only
be described as an abuse of terms. The
idea that, do what we may, each nation, or

206

CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION

each order of civilization is doomed sooner
or later to decadence and extinction, is a
baseless superstition, unsupported by proof
and indefensible in argument.

Those who are temperamentally inclined
to pessimism find a somewhat better sup-
port in another direction. So far as our
present knowledge goes, it has been estab-
lished that, in course of time, the sun will
have radiated so much of its heat that
the earth will be uninhabitable. It will
become, like the moon,

" A ruined world, a globe burnt out,
A corpse upon the road of night."

With that prospect at the end of the vista,
what, it is asked, is the value of your
" conscious evolution " ? Let man strive
as he will, build up a race as noble, a
society as majestic, as the most idealistic
imagination can conceive, it will end at
last in a frozen desolation, and all is vanity.
But the astronomers, who tell us of " the
dying sun," tell us also that, at the present
rate of diffusion of solar heat, it will take

207

PRACTICAL ETHICS

a million million years before the time
comes when life at the human level will
be impossible upon this planet. For every
one year that has elapsed from the Stone
Age until now, at least one hundred mil-
lion years will elapse from the present time
until the end. So that any nervous appre-
hension on that score seems to be pre-
mature.

The principle of conscious evolution
will take account of three main factors
first, the physical basis of human life, that
is the number and the quality of the human
beings brought into the world ; secondly,
their physical environment ; thirdly, their
environment of ideas.

Nowhere has research been more fruit-
ful in recent years than in the fields of
embryology and heredity. The construc-
tion of microscopes of greater and greater
power has enabled us to watch the minute
mechanism by which physical characteris-
tics are transmitted from one generation to
the next. The investigation of heredity

208

CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION

along the lines initiated by Mendel has dis-
closed, also, the rules for selective breeding.
They have been tested in the breeding of
domestic animals, food-plants and flowers
with remarkable results. " Heredity and
breeding,' 5 says Sir Peter Chalmers Mit-
chell, " are becoming exact experimental
sciences. " Efforts are being made to adapt
the rules, so far as practicable, to man-
kind. There has arisen the new science of
Eugenics.

It tries to find the means by which the
physical qualities of the human race may
be improved generation by generation. As,
gradually, the right rules are established,
the practice of those rules will become a
part of the ethical code. There is here an
example of the way in which moral ideas
expand and change in consequence of dis-
coveries by science. Already it has be-
come a matter of conscience, when choosing
a wife or husband, for people who are alive
to social duty to have regard to physical
and mental qualities for the sake of pos-
terity ; in particular, not knowingly to

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

perpetuate a strain of mental deficiency or
instability. It is constantly said, " In view
of his family history, So-and-so ought not
to marry and have children " ; and the
person himself, if the facts are so, usually
recognizes his obligation. To put debased
money into circulation is an offence ; it
is being realized that to put degenerate men
and women into circulation is a much
graver offence. How far, if at all, these
ideas should be embodied in legislation and
enforced by penalties is a question that is
under debate in various countries.

Heredity and environment both play
their part in the evolutionary process.
Which is the more important has given rise
to long, and sometimes lively, controver-
sies ; but no one doubts that, in whatever
proportions, each contributes. Conscious
evolution must stress the need for con-
tinuous improvement in environment. To
effect this is less difficult, and quicker of
accomplishment, than the improvement
of inherited characteristics. Particularly is
this so in matters of physical environment.

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CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION

The great advance in public sanitation has
been one of the chief successes of modern
civilization. " Our increased knowledge of
hygiene," says Professor J. B. S. Haldane,
" has transferred resignation and inaction,
in face of epidemic disease, from a religious
virtue to a justly punishable offence. "
Large further advances are now within
reach. As Haldane says again, " There is
still an immense amount to be learnt about
health, but if what is at present known to a
few were part of the general knowledge,
the average expectation of life in this
country could probably be increased by
about ten years." Good planning of the
cities, proper housing for the workers,
purification of the atmosphere of industrial
centres, easy access from the towns to
the country and to the sea these are
among the methods which we may
adopt, with conscious purpose, in order
to promote the further evolution of the
race.

There is also the environment of ideas,
that vast invisible network of influences,

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

permeating social life, which guides in-
dividual action. Ethics is an agent of
conscious evolution, and an agent which
plays a supremely important part. Reject
or neglect the moral codes, whether per-
sonal or social or international, and the
evolution of man into the future will go
on, as it must; but it will be towards a
future not of continuous progress but of
certain disaster.

Browning said of his " Grammarian/'

" Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace. . . .
That before living he'd learn how to live."

Peculiar indeed, for it is the exception
for men to plan their lives. Many are
like thistle-seeds, casually blown by the
wind, sprouting where they chance to fall
if the soil is propitious. Or one may re-
call Galsworthy's metaphor " like gnats
above a stagnant pool on a summer even-
ing man danced up and down without the
faintest notion why."

Socrates became a student and a teacher

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CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION

of philosophy because, after going about
among the most intelligent men in Athens
and questioning them on their ideas, he
found that not one had troubled to study
the right way to live. After two thousand
years we, like the Athenians, are all busy,
intent, purposeful. But on what business
are we intent ? For what purpose are we
hurrying ? Racial evolution cannot be
separated from individual evolution ; if
the one is to be conscious and not " sense-
less," so must the other. It is because
learning how to live remains a grace
that is peculiar, that, as Emerson said,
" The appearance strikes the eye every-
where of an aimless society, of aimless

nations. "

Here it is that ethics enters, trying to
find what things are good, what aims are
worth pursuit ; teaching that each society
exists to promote the perfection of its
members ; that each nation should help,
and not thwart, the efforts of the rest. It
sets the goal for politics and economics,
for all the vast variety of activities which

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

make up the seething life of the modern
world.

Religion may powerfully co-operate.
" The paramount virtue of religion/' says
Matthew Arnold, " is that it has lighted
up morality ; that it has supplied the
emotion and inspiration needful for carry-
ing the sage along the narrow way per-
fectly, for carrying the ordinary man along
it at all." The strongest minds may dis-
pense with emotion, and, seeing life by
the clear white light of reason, may go
along their path unhelped by what they
may regard as adventitious aids. Not so
with the average man and woman ; still
less with the child. Perilous as emotion
is for guidance, it is invaluable for
stimulus. It ought never to be the
substitute for reason, but may always
serve as an invaluable agent and an
inspiring ally.

If conscious evolution is to be taken as
the ruling principle, it is clearly essential
that both philosophy and religion should
do what science has done with such bril-

214

CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION

liant results, and escape from what has
been called " the backward-looking habit/'
" No one can walk backwards into the
future." Philosophy and religion are not
branches of historical study ; they are, or
should be, living spirits ; learning indeed
from the past, but in order to be the
guides of the present in its march into
the future. And there need be no diffi-
dence or humility in setting the aim,
nor pessimism as to the possibility of
attaining it. If, as we now know is the
case, unconscious evolution has enabled
the lower animals to be the prototypes of
simian man, and simian man of man in
civilization, then there is no reason why
conscious evolution should not raise us,
and with vastly accelerated speed, to some-
thing as much higher again in the scale of
being.

But however that may be, it may at
least be possible, under the influence of
wise ethical ideas, to reach, within a time
not too distant, a state of society far better
than that about us in which there shall

PRACTICAL ETHICS

be dignity, as well as activity, in private
life, simplicity in manners, beauty in en-
vironment, majesty in the State and tran-
quillity in the world.

CHAPTER XIV

SUMMARY

IT will be understood that, in a book as
short as this, dealing with a subject so
wide as Practical Ethics, it is impossible
to do more than indicate some main lines
of thought. It must be left to the reader
to pursue them further, if he will, and
to seek the answers to the many speci-
fic questions that arise at every point.
Doing that, he will find himself led
insensibly into the spheres of religion,
of politics and of economics. Each of
these, in part at least, is or should be
applied ethics. No fixed boundaries exist
to separate any one of them from the
others.

It may be useful if I end with a review
and summary of the ideas which have

217

PRACTICAL ETHICS

been put forward for consideration, add-
ing here and there a further point or offer-
ing a different presentation.

Ethics asks, in the first place What is
right and what is wrong ? The history of
philosophy shows, I submit, that it has
been found impossible to answer this ques-
tion by laying down any simple, general
principle of any kind. There have been
many attempts, made by some of the
most acute intellects that the human
race has produced ; but no formula, and
no system, has been proposed which has
won general acceptance. There is no
agreement upon any definition of " Good-
ness " as a whole, of which particular
" goods " may, so to speak, be regarded as
fractions.

It is therefore better to begin at the
other end. It is better to say this parti-
cular action, or idea, or custom, is good ;
that other is also good ; there are in fact
vast numbers of things, each one of which

in itself is good. We find that many of

218

SUMMARY

these are alike ; they may be grouped into
classes ; we may say that each of those
classes is good. For example, it is seen to
be right to tell the truth on this occasion ;
it is also right to tell the truth on that
occasion, and the other ; we may reach
the generalization that it is right to tell
the truth on all occasions. Or we may
possibly find that there are certain excep-
tional occasions on which it would not
be right to tell the truth, in which case
our generalization would be that it is
almost always right to tell the truth.
Broadly speaking, to tell the truth is one
element in goodness. There are other
elements, built up in the same way.
Taken all together they make up " Good-
ness." The perfectly good man would be
one, all of whose actions would come
within those classes. Included in actions
are thoughts ; to think is itself to do
something.

In other words, the concept " Good-
ness " is an ultimate synthesis of parti-
cular " goods " ; " goods " are not to

219

PRACTICAL ETHICS

be reached by analysis of an initial idea of
" Goodness."

The question next presents itself How
are the particular " goods " to be recog-
nized as such ?

Various suggested answers must, on
examination, be rejected. The answer
cannot be that the decision is to be left to
the individual conscience. The fact that a
man holds that " this is a right thing for
me to do," does not make it so. If an-
other man says that he is wrong, there
ought to be some method of deciding be-
tween them. Unless there is some method,
it is at all events certain that nothing
worthy to be called a science of ethics
can exist. Morality is left anarchic. In-
dividual conscience, then, cannot be the
ultimate test of right and wrong. Con-
science may err. " Although we hold it
to be wrong of a person to act against his
conscience, we may at the same time blame
him for having such a conscience as he
has." Why can we ever be justified in

220

SUMMARY

blaming him ? There must be some reason
other than the fact that the dictates of
our own consciences happen to differ from
the dictates of his.

Nor can the answer simply be that
whatever " the community " holds to be
right, is so. Such a doctrine would have
justified every evil custom which has ever
degraded and disgraced mankind. The
laws in force at any particular time are not
to be considered good laws merely for the
reason that they are in force. If that
were so, no laws could ever be changed.
What the community at one period holds
to be right, is often held at a later period,
but in similar conditions, to be wrong.
This is undeniable, and the fact is con-
clusive against the doctrine that actions
which are generally approved are thereby
established as right actions. Ethics is not
merely an inquiry into what are, actually,
the feelings or opinions of any set of men,
any more than into the feelings or opinions
of the individual man. What is desired
is one thing, what ought to be desired, is

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PRACTICAL ETHICS

or may be another. " The mere fact
that a given man or set of men has a given
feeling or opinion can never be sufficient,
by itself, to show that an action is right or
wrong."

Nor, again, can the answer be that what-
ever arises in the course of evolution is
good, relatively to what has gone before.
It is obvious that the later is not the better
merely because it is later.

The answer suggested for acceptance is
that right actions are those which are con-
ducive to human welfare. They come to
be recognized to be so through a vast and
continuous process of discussion and ex-
periment. Into this process there enter
the opinions of individuals ; and these are
often combined into the judgements of
communities. Integral to the process are
the root instincts of human nature. They
are modified and guided by reason,
which is itself not less a part of human
nature ; and reason is directed by its
own interpretation of the results of
experience.

222

SUMMARY

The process itself is fallible. Con-
stantly actions or ideas are held to be good
which experience shows not to be so.
Then either nothing is done, on account
of inertia, and mankind suffers in conse-
quence ; or else a movement is set on
foot to effect a change. The movement
may work through persuasion or through
force, or through a combination of the
two. It may sometimes take centuries be-
fore a change, recognized by the enlight-
ened to be desirable, is carried into effect.
A wrong idea or custom may be bound up
with some political or ecclesiastical or social
system, which is cherished as valuable in
itself. If the system is stereotyped and
unable to change, great difficulties may
ensue. The most violent controversies
in human history have arisen from this
cause.

But morals are not static. Sooner or
later, in one place, or in several, or in
all, the code is modified ; the categories of
rights and wrongs are changed. Taking a
retrospect over the centuries it is seen that

223

PRACTICAL ETHICS

the ideas of right and wrong, which are
embodied in customs, in laws, even in
religious beliefs, differ from one period to
another. How do they come to differ ?
In the long run it is through that pro-
cess of discussion and experiment. In-
dividuals change their opinions. In time,
public opinion as a whole is found to
have changed. Codes, conventions, creeds
follow suit.

It is not to be suggested that this is a
description of the course which human
history, on its mental side, has actually
taken with any kind of smoothness or
uniformity. There have been active,
at various stages in all parts of the
globe, all sorts of irrational influences
superstition, magic, personal ambition
and love of gain, race conflict, conquest.
The chequered and blood-stained story
of mankind is chequered and is blood-
stained precisely because of that. But
in so far as reason has been at work
it has operated through that process ;
and if we wished that reason should

224

SUMMARY

work more effectively, that would be its
mode.

When it is asked whether, in morals,
it is the right action which counts, or
the right motive, the answer must be
both. The right action is one good thing
and the right motive is another good
thing.

If it is asked whether the individual is
right to seek his own well-being or that of
the community, the answer must again be
both. His own welfare is a good in
itself ; it contributes as well to the good of
the others. The welfare of the society
is also a good ; it conduces to the welfare
of its members, and, as a rule, of this
particular member among the rest. Where
the two interests do not coincide, one must
yield to the other, or a balance has to be
struck between them. The art of private
life and of political action consists largely
in finding, in each case, which should yield
or what the right balance is. Social pro-
gress consists in great part in trying to

225 u

PRACTICAL ETHICS

reduce these cases of conflict to the smallest
number. That community would raise its
organization to the highest pitch which
was able to secure that every action of
each individual to promote his own welfare
would also contribute to the welfare of the
society, and every action of the society for
its own good would also promote the good
of each of its members. Such an ideal
may not be fully attainable, but the closer
a community approximates to it, the better
it is.

The second problem of ethics is why men
should pursue goodness. For what reason
should anyone act rightly at all ?

But at the outset of that inquiry the
doubt arises whether men have any real
power of choice. Has scientific deter-
minism shown that there is no freedom of
the human will ? And if free will goes,
does not morality go with it ?

To this the answer here suggested is
that the Law of Causality applies to man
and to mind, as it applies everywhere else.

226

SUMMARY

Man cannot be excepted from nature, nor
mind from the universe. In spite of some
recent theories, there is no valid reason to
depart from the principle that causality
applies to all things. The human person-
ality, with the rest, is the product of causes.
But one element in the personality so pro-
duced is a power of choice in accordance
with its character. The causes that have
combined to produce an individual char-
acter are innumerable ; they are to a
great extent unknown, either to the person
himself or to others. It is impossible,
therefore, either for him or for them, to
predict with certainty what he will do in a
particular case. But something is known
of the determining causes ; and more may
be known, through observation, of his
character itself ; so that some kind of
prediction is often possible. But in prac-
tice, both the individual and his neigh-
bours must proceed in their relations with
one another upon the basis that, when he
makes a choice, he acts spontaneously.
His personality, product of causes as it is,

227

PRACTICAL ETHICS

is an entity in itself ; it must accept
responsibility for its own acts. And the
fact that it is required to accept such
responsibility, is itself one of the in-
fluences which will determine what course,
in a given case, the person will actually
choose.

Proceeding, then, to consider why men
should act rightly, we must start from
primary instincts in human nature, which
have been brought forward, in the course of
evolution, from animal nature in general.
The sentiments of the mind are classified
by different psychologists in various ways,
but for the purpose of moral philosophy
we may consider those which are com-
monly grouped together under the names
of egoism and altruism. Both of these
enter, and should enter, into the guidance
of conduct.

Right actions may be divided into three
classes. There are those which are to the
direct and immediate interest of the agent ;
he will do them for that reason. There

228

SUMMARY

are those which he sees, or which he may
be brought to see, will be to his own in-
terest ultimately ; he will do them, if at
all, because of that. And there are those
which do not in fact conduce to his per-
sonal interest at all, using that term in the
sense in which it is ordinarily understood.
Neither directly nor indirectly, neither now
nor in any future which can be foreseen
with assurance, will he as an individual
derive any benefit. Nevertheless, they are
actions which it is right for him to do.
They conduce to the welfare of some other
persons, or to welfare in general. Unless
society is maintained, individuals will not
be able to live well ; and it cannot be
maintained unless the members are willing,
when the occasion requires, to make
sacrifices either small sacrifices, or, if
need be, great sacrifices for the sake
of the society, and without expectation
of ulterior benefit for themselves. The
individual will perform actions of this class
if he does perform them because of
the motives other than self-interest that

229

PRACTICAL ETHICS

animate him love, duty, patriotism, the
altruistic motives.

It is essential, then, for the welfare of
the collectivity of persons, which we call
society, that each one of its members
should do what is right in those two classes
of cases in which the individual gains no
immediate benefit. Where he will gain an
ultimate benefit, he has to be led to realize
this. Where he will gain no benefit at all,
or will suffer injury, he has to be induced
to act from altruism.

" What is desired is one thing ; what
ought to be desired may be another,"
How are the two to be brought into
line ? How am I to be led, as Goethe
put it, to " bring my inclinations and my
reason into perfect harmony " ?

Society may seek to achieve this through
all kinds of influences. First comes the
training of infancy and childhood, with
family influences extending through ado-
lescence, and often on into manhood and
womanhood. There are educational in-
fluences and religious influences. There

230

SUMMARY

are rewards and penalties, some dispensed
by the State, some by the economic system
and some by public opinion. Individual
character is moulded by all of these, and
under their influence habits are formed.
Each person cannot work out for himself a
right code of conduct applicable to every
occasion. He must accept unless there is
good reason to the contrary the judge-
ment of the community as the ordinary
guide. Public opinion comes in, not as a
final and infallible arbiter, but to interpret
the facts and to indicate conclusions which
are normally acceptable. In the Epistle
to the Ephesians they were exhorted
to seek " whatsoever things are of good
report."

Darwin summed up the matter in a
single sentence remarkably compact and
comprehensive : " Ultimately our moral
sense or conscience becomes a highly com-
plex sentiment originating in the social
instincts, largely guided by the approbation
of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-
interest, and in later times by deep religious

231

PRACTICAL ETHICS

feelings, and confirmed by instruction and
habit."

A system of ethics is not a construction ;
it is something living, like a tree. It
should be rooted deep in human life
and character, drawing its sustenance
from there and from the air about it.
Alive, putting forth fresh shoots and
leaves year by year, it grows into the
future.

Looking forward into that future we see
the vastness of the tasks waiting to be
done. It is obvious enough it needs no
proving that men as yet are far from
having achieved their own complete well-
being. In moments of pessimism we may
even be inclined, dwelling upon the evils
of our times, to ask what is the worth
of our so-called civilization, to question
whether, taking things all in all, there has
been a real progress. Yet there are few
who, on reflection, would seriously con-
tend that it would be better for mankind
to wipe out now the whole of civilization

232

SUMMARY

and to return to conditions of primeval
savagery. Slowly, painfully, the genera-
tions that have preceded have brought into
being the society that we have, full of
faults and imperfections, but conferring,
nevertheless, immense and real benefits.
It is for the present and the future genera-
tions to endeavour to cure the faults and
to remove the imperfections.

Upon us such a duty is even more in-
cumbent than it ever was upon them, for
we the first in all history have learnt
the process of evolution which is at work
in the universe. We have grasped, in some
degree, what is our own position as in-
heritors of the past and progenitors of the
future. From now on, human evolution
may become conscious. It need no longer
be dependent on " senseless agencies."
The change should greatly quicken the pace
of progress not only in things material,
but in all things. And it should inspire a
far greater confidence.

Early among the results of the new
spirit of conscious evolution has been the

233

PRACTICAL ETHICS

recognition that the physical material of
the race can and should be improved.
The science of eugenics must take an
increasingly important place among the
social sciences. As was said by Sir
Francis Galton, its pioneer, " We of the
living generation are the dispensers of
the natural gifts of our successors, and
we should rise to the level of our high
opportunities."

The inter-relations between individual
and society must also be a principal subject
of study. A people and its institutions
are products of each other. A nation in
one generation establishes a custom, or a
code, or some new organization, and these
help to form the nation in its next genera-
tion. " The individual," says Whitehead,
" is formative of the society, the society
is formative of the individual." Their
relations are determined by politics, and
politics cannot fail to play a foremost part
in conscious evolution.

And not least in the international sphere.
The philosophic eye, looking back over

234

SUMMARY

history, will see that nothing has so harmed
men's welfare as the lack of a sound inter-
national morality universally recognized.
And nothing has contributed more to the
disasters and the perils of the modern
world than the philosophy which teaches
that there cannot be, and ought not to be,
such a morality. The Hegelian doctrine is
that, because there has not hitherto existed
any super-national power, able to force
nations to fulfil duties to one another, the
nations therefore can have no such duties.
This is equivalent to saying that, if there
were no police force, it would not be
immoral to murder and to steal. Nor can
the citizens of the several States, if they
retain any religious principles at all, for
ever acquiesce in " the strange anomaly of
Christian Europe, a society of nations all
of which had accepted the religion of peace
and brotherhood, with its universal ethics,
yet which were constantly at war with each
other."

For guidance in the pursuit of welfare,
men must mainly rely upon their own

PRACTICAL ETHICS

experience, and the experience of pre-
vious generations. Accurate records of the
present and of the past are vital to progress.
Exact statistics and true history are the
materials with which a conscious evolution
must work. Without them the people have
not even a chance of learning what the
results of past experiments have really
been ; they are robbed of the most reliable
of all tests in deciding what is right and
what is wrong. So that those who de-
liberately falsify history, and, for the sake
of some political or ostensibly religious
motive, compel the teaching to children
of deductions from the past that are un-
true, commit the worst of all crimes
against humanity. Ignorant of the facts,
the new generations can hardly fail to form
wrong judgements ; wrong judgements
must necessarily lead to wrong policies ;
there is no limit to the disasters which
wrong policies may entail upon a suffering
mankind.

An evolution which has become con-
236

SUMMARY

scious will no longer use such terms as " the
inevitable march of events," or " obedience
to the spirit of the age." It will be recog-
nized that there are no such things as
" events " which " march," or a " spirit "
which must be " obeyed." These are
mere figures of speech. They represent
no reality. There is nothing existent in
fact but individual men and women, with
their training, their habits, their ideas,
their actions ; men and women who vote
at elections, or do not vote ; who write
articles in newspapers, or read them,
approve them or do not approve ; who
lead movements, or join them, or oppose ;
who fight or do not fight ; work or stop
work ; who think about public affairs
or neglect to think. Apart from them
there are no " events," no " age " and
no " spirit." Within the framework set
by nature, the future evolution of man-
kind will depend upon the thoughts
and the deeds of individual men and
women, and upon nothing else. Each
private act and each social activity, all the

237

PRACTICAL ETHICS

sciences and all the arts, take their places
in one great scheme. It is for a wise
philosophy to bring them into unison.

238

NOTES AND REFERENCES

NOTES ON BOOKS

INDEX

NOTES AND REFERENCES

IN some of the chapters of this book, I
have reproduced passages from papers and
addresses which have previously been pub-
lished ; in particular, " The Dual Basis of
Conduct," Journal of Philosophical Studies,
July, 1930 ; " Patriotism and Peace," Con-
temporary Review, September, 1928 ; and
three Presidential Addresses to the British
Institute of Philosophy, subsequently pub-
lished under the titles of Philosophy and
the Ordinary Man (Kegan Paul, 1932), The
Tree of Good and Evil (Peter Davies, 1933),
and Philosophy, Religion and Present World
Conditions (Contemporary Review, March,
1935)-

The student of philosophy may observe
that the term Value is not used in any
definition in this book. Much controversy

241

PRACTICAL ETHICS

has arisen about this conception ; and as
that controversy has been technical in
character and inconclusive in result, it
would be undesirable in a short book of
this kind to engage in it. Those who are
interested may find an acute analysis of
the various views held with regard to
Value, but again without conclusiveness,
in The Philosophy of Value , by H. Osborne
(Cambridge University Press, 1933).

Some philosophers have engaged also
in a discussion whether there is a distinction
to be drawn between " what is good "
and " what is right," and if so, where the
distinction lies. To a great extent this
is the same question as that of the relations
between the results of an action and the
motive ; but the inquiry into " good " and
" right " is too technical and too linguistic
in character to be entered upon here.

242

NOTES AND REFERENCES
PAGE

6. Sayings of Confucius (Translated by Leonard
A. Lyall), p. 15.

8. The will of God . . . S. V. Benet, John

Brown's Body, p. 213.

9. St. Augustine Sir William Collins, The Place

of Volition in Education, p. 4.

10. When private emotion . . . Bertrand Rus-

sell, Scientific Outlook, p. 147.

11. Mankind is the animal . . . Whitehead,

Adventures of Ideas, p. 58.

ii. Man's habits change . . . J. B. S. Haldane,
Possible Worlds, p. 64.

14. Huxley See Ritchie, Darwinism and Politics,

p. 12.

15. Darwin See Sir J. Arthur Thomson, " A Bio-

logist's Philosophy " in Contemporary British
Philosophy, II, p. 331.

17. Emerson Essay on Worship, Conduct of Life,

p. 164.
Bergson Deux Sources de la Morale et de la

Religion, p. 128.
Laws of Manu See Westermarck, The Origin

and Development of the Moral Ideas, Vol. I,

p. 119.

1 8. Cannibalism is moral . . . The Note-Books

of Samuel Butler, p. 29.

20. Fictional abstraction See Vaihinger, The Philo-
sophy of As If.

28. Sterne Tristram Shandy, Book II, Chap. 12.

30. Bergson U Evolution Crdatrice, p. 7.

Your thoughts are making you Bishop Steere.

243

NOTES AND REFERENCES
PAGE

39. Victor Hugo Les Miserable*, I, p. 36.
41. Buddha C. T. Strauss, The Buddha and His
Doctrine, p. 101.

43. Kant The Metaphysic of Ethics, Book I, Chap.

I, pp. 8 and 18.

Hobhouse Morals in Evolution, p. 14.
Westermarck The Origin and Development of

the Moral Ideas, II, p. 154.
Lippmann A Preface to Morals, p. 221.

44. Spinoza Ethic, Part IV, Propositions 21, 22.

Trans, by Hale White.
Herbert Spencer Education, p. 189.

45. J. S. Mill On Liberty, p. 93.

48. La morale . . . Janet quo. Julian Huxley,

Essays in Popular Science, p. 179.
Aristotle Politics, I, i. 9.
The life of man . . . Hobbes, Leviathan, Part

I, Chap. 13.

49. Whitehead Adventures of Ideas, p. 42.
55. Pope Essay on Man, III, 1. 315.

57. Select Committee on Capital Punishment, 1930
Evidence of Dr. J. Devon, Questions 3310,
etc.

59. Determinism See Herbert Samuel, " Cause,
Effect, and Professor Eddington," Nineteenth
Century and After, April, 1933, and Professor
Eddington 's reply in the issue of June, 1933.

67. Schopenhauer quo. by Einstein in Living
Philosophies, p. 3.

69. Spinoza Ethic, Part I, Appendix. Trans, by
Hale White.

244

NOTES AND REFERENCES

PAGE

74. Meredith quo. Le Gallienne, p. 74.

75. Novalis quo. by Hardy, The Mayor of Caster-

bridge, p. 137.

82. Philosophic craving for unity T. H. Green,

Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 241.

83. The citizens must understand . . . Llewellyn,

Confound their Politics, p. 17.
Reference may be made, with regard to the
points raised in this chapter, to a paper by
Prof. Alexander on " Morality as an Art,"
Journal of Philosophical Studies, April, 1928,
Vol. Ill, No. 10 ; and to Prof. Prichard's lec-
ture on " Duty and Interest " (Oxford, 1928).

88. Hobhouse Morals in Evolution, p. 10.

94. Our nervous system . . . Dr. Carpenter quo.
by William James, Principles of Psychology,
Vol. I, Chap. IV, p. 112.

96. Bergson Les Deux Sources de la Morale et de
la Religion, p. 21.

98. With flame of freedom . . . John Addington
Symonds.

104. Aliotta " Science and Religion in the Nine-

teenth Century " in Science, Religion and
Reality, p. 180.
Pringle-Pattison The Idea of God, p. 57.

105. The eye sees only . . . quo. Thomson and

Geddes, Evolution, p. 213.
Whitehead Science and the Modern World,

p. 262.

107. The evolution of gas into genius Clodd, Story
of the Creation, p. 288.

245

NOTES AND REFERENCES

PAGE

108. Whitehead Science and the Modern World,

p. 260.
in. The senseless abomination of modern war

Field-Marshal Sir William Robertson.
115. Pliny Letters, III, p. 30.

115. Huxley Evolution and Ethics, p. 28.

1 1 6. It is a street . . . Lady Bell, At the Works,

p. 18.

117. Emerson The Conduct of Life, p. 180.

121. Book of Proverbs xiii. 21.
Dhammapada quo. Westermarck, The Origin

and Development of the Moral Ideas, Vol. I,
p. 301.

122. Yi-King quo. Religious Systems of the World,

p. 74.

Huxley Method and Results, p. 317.
124. Schweitzer Civilization and Ethics, p. 62.
Huxley Aphorisms, p. 52.
The gods are just . . . Shakespeare, King Lear.

133. Alexander Space, Time and Deity, Vol. II,

p. 282.

134. The orthodoxy of one generation . . .

Canon J. M. Wilson, " The Religious Effect/'
Evolution in the Light of Modern Knowledge,

P- 485-

135. Old things need not . . . Clough Ah ! Yet

Consider It Again.

137. The world is born . . . Le Roy, Revue de
Metaphysique et de Morale, July, 1901 quo.
Aliotta, The Idealistic Reaction against Science,
p. 144.

246

NOTES AND REFERENCES

PAGE

137. William James Principles of Psychology, I,

p. 121.

143. Schiller Problems of Belief, p. 29.
147. Matthew Arnold " Equality, " Mixed Essays,

p. 70.

154. Whitehead Adventures of Ideas, p. 87.

155. Burke Reflections on the French Revolution,

P- H3-
159. " There has been a marked recrudescence of

superstition since the Great War, chiefly per-
haps among the half-educated rich. Miracu-
lous cures, necromancy, and other forms of
supernaturalism have now more adherents
than in the last century/' Inge, The Norman
Lockyer Lecture, 1927, p. 8.

162. Among uncivilized races . . . Westermarck,

The Origin and Development of the Moral
Ideas, Vol. II, p. 20.

163. Fichte quo. Inge, Outspoken Essays, II, p. 128.
Treitschke Lectures on Politics, I, p. 65 quo.

Balfour, Essays Speculative and Political,

p. 231.

Nietzsche Thus Spake Zarathustra, I, p. 18.
Hegel quo. Inge, Outspoken Essays, II, p. 128.

164. Hegel permits the State . . . Barker, Political

Thought in England from Spencer to the Present

Day, p. 29.
1 68. Chalmers Mitchell Evolution and the War,

P- fa.
172. Aborigines of America J. T. Adams, The Epic

of America, p. 6.

247

NOTES AND REFERENCES
PAGE

182. Browne Religio Medici, p. 22.

Voltaire quo. Westermarck, The Origin and
Development of the Moral Ideas, Vol. II,
p. 183.

190. Kant Jugendlehre, para. 17 quo. Chamber-

lain, Foundations of the Nineteenth Century,
II, p. 494.

" It is not only theological moralists that main-
tain that animals can have no rights and that
abstinence from wanton cruelty is a duty not
to the animal but to man. This view has
been shared by Kant and by many later philo-
sophers, e.g. Alexander, Moral Order and Pro-
gress, p. 281 ; Ritchie, Natural Rights, p. no
seq." Westermarck, The Origin and Develop-
ment of the Moral Ideas, Vol. II, p. 508.

191. Ritchie Natural Rights, Chap. V, p. no.
193. Westermarck The Origin and Development of

the Moral Ideas, Vol. II, p. 512.

200. Geological period Jeans, The Universe Around
Us, p. 152. Jeffreys, " The Evolution of
the Earth as a Planet," Evolution in the
Light of Modern Knowledge : A Collective
Work, pp. 42-8.

Antiquity of man G. Elliot Smith, " Anthro-
pology," in Evolution in the Light of Modern
Knowledge : A Collective Work, p. 290.

202. It is bad biology . . . J. Arthur Thomson,
" A Biologist's Philosophy," in Contemporary
British Philosophy, II, p. 331.
Whitehead Adventures of Ideas, pp. 8-9.

248

NOTES AND REFERENCES
PAGE

203. Un aveugle peut atteindre au but : mais
que de fleches perdues. Saintine, Picciola,

P- 37-

205. Evolution is often regarded . . . Heath,

" Philosophy and Contemporary Science,"
Science To-Day, p. 388.

206. Herbert Spencer " The Social Organism,"

Essays, Vol. I. See also Principles of Socio-
logy, Vol. I.

207. A ruined world . . . R. Burton, The Kasidah,

p. 60.
Duration of man Jeans, The Universe Around

Us, p. 337.

209. Chalmers Mitchell Materialism and Vitalism,
p. 22.

211. J. B. S. Haldane Daedalus, p. 89.

J. B. S. Haldane in Living Philosophies, p. 323.

212. Browning " A Grammarian's Funeral."
Galsworthy Fraternity, p. 73.

213. Emerson Nature, p. 459.

214. Matthew Arnold " Essays on Criticism,"

Marcus Aurelius, I, p. 346.

215. The backward-looking habit . . . Dr. Singer,

Science, Religion and Reality, p. 122.
No one can walk backwards . . . Herge-
sheimer, The Three Black Penny s, p. 166.

220. Although we hold it to be wrong . . . Wester-

marck, The Origin and Development of the
Moral Ideas, Vol. I, p. 19.

221, What is desired is one thing . . . See Muir-

head, Rule and End in Morals, p. 33.
249

NOTES AND REFERENCES
PAGE

222. The mere fact . . . Moore, Ethics, p. 130.

230. Goethe Wilhelm Meister, Carlyle's Trans-

lation, Book VIII, Ch. 5.

231. Darwin Descent of Man, Part I, Ch. 5.

234. Whitehead Religion in the Making, p. 75.

235. The strange anomaly of Christian Europe . . .

McDougall, Ethics and Modern World
Problems, p. 18.

250

NOTES ON BOOKS

THE most valuable books on this subject
written in English in recent years are
Westermarck, The Origin and Develop-
ment of the Moral Ideas (Two vols.,
Macmillan), and L. T. Hobhouse, Morals
in Evolution (Chapman and Hall). Other
books of special interest are :

A. N. Whitehead Adventures of Ideas

(Cambridge).
A. N. Whitehead Science and the Modern

World (Cambridge).
Sorley Moral Values and the Idea of God

(Cambridge).
Pringle-Pattison The Idea of God

(Oxford).
Lippmann A Preface to Morals (Allen

and Unwin).
Bertrand Russell The Scientific Outlook

(Allen and Unwin).
J. A. Thomson Science and Religion

(Methuen).

251

NOTES ON BOOKS

T. H. Huxley's Ethics and Evolution
(Macmillan) should not be left unread.
Sir P. Chalmers Mitchell's Evolution and
the War (Murray) deals with the special
point indicated in its title. There are
three useful collective works, in which
many of the problems of moral philosophy
and its relations with religion and with
science are dealt with by a number of
writers of authority Contemporary British
Philosophy > edited by Muirhead (Two vols.,
Allen and Unwin) ; Science, Religion and
Reality, edited by Needham (Sheldon
Press) ; Evolution in the Light of Modern
Knowledge (Blackie).

In the Home University Library is
Prof. Moore's Ethics. Relevant also to
the subject, and published in this series,
are Bertrand Russell, The Problems of
Philosophy ; McDougall, Psychology ;
Thomson and Geddes, Evolution ; Carr-
Saunders, Eugenics ; MacBride, An Intro-
duction to the Study of Heredity.

252

INDEX

Aborigines, 172
Alexander, 133
Aliotta, 104
Altruism, 43, 81, 121,

178, 228
Animals, 186
Arnold, Matthew, 147,

214
Autocracy, 131

Balance, 55, 137
Bentham, 38
Bergson, 30, 96
Birth Control, 148
Bridges, 55

Browne, Thomas, 182
Browning, 212
Buddha, 41
Bull- fighting, 197
Burke, 155

Causality, 59, 65, 103,

226
Character, 30

Civilization, 133
Class Distinctions, 146
Colonization, 172
Conscience, 9, 220
Conscious Evolution ,

200, 232

Consequences, 19, 123
Conservatism, 137
Co-operation, 15, 88
Cosmopolitanism, 179
Crime, 57, 61, 71, 84
Current Questions, 139
Custom, 17, 133, 221

Darwin, 15, 231
Determinism, 56, 226
Divorce, 148
Duel, 25, 142
Duty, 43, 77, 132

Earth, 207
Economics, 145, 217
Eddington, 59
Education, 99

253

INDEX

Egoism, 43, 8 1, 127, 178, Heredity, 208

228

Einstein, 60
Embryology, 208
Emerson, 17, 117, 213
Environment, 208
Eugenics, 62, 148, 209,

234
Evolution, n, 13, 88,

103, 125, 167, 192, Inclination, 43, 77

200, 210, 222 Individual, 83

Evolution of Morals, 8, Innovation, 135

123, 132, 143, 144, 222 Instinct, n, 87, 228

History, 205, 224, 236
Hobhouse, 43, 88
Home, 152
Honesty, 78, 96
Humanitarianism, 28,

191
Huxley, 14, 122, 124

Experience, 25

Family, 149

Family Allowances, 158

Fatalism, 74, 237

Fichte, 163

Free Will, 56, 226

Galsworthy, 212
Galton, 234
Goethe, 230
Golden Rule, 46
Good, the, 21, 82, 218

Habit, 94

Haldane, J. B. S., 211
Happiness, 38
Hegel, 163,234

Internationalism , 1 62 ,

234
Intuition, 9, 164, 220

James, William, 137
Johnson, 63

Kant, 43, 190

Lamer -f air e^ 14, 115
Law, 81, 204
Liberty, 98, 118
Lippmann, 43
Lodge, 60
Luxury, 146

Marcus Aurelius, 124
Marriage, 148

254

INDEX

Materialism, 75
Mendelism, 209
Meredith, 74
Militarism, 162, 180
Mill,J.S., 4S
Mitchell, P. Chalmers,

168, 209

Mixed motives, 91
Moore, 34
Motives, 30, 78, 225

Nationalism, 162
Natural Rights, n
Nature, 13
Nietzsche, 163
Novalis, 75

Patriotism, 156, 177

Penal Law, 159

Penalties, 113

Personality, 64, 227

Planck, 60

Pliny, 115

Politics, 52, 114, 145,

184, 217
Pope, 55

Poverty, no, 145
Primitive Morality, 17,

I33 , 149, 192
Pringle-Pattison, 104
Progress, 15, 170

Public Opinion, 115, 130,
153,231

Religion, 7, 80, 101,

217

Rewards, 113
Right and Wrong, 7, 19,

90, 218

Rights, Natural, n, 187
Ritchie, 191
Rutherford, 60

Sabbath, 136
Sacrifices, 194
Schiller, 143
Schopenhauer, 67
Science, 103
Self-interest, 43, 85, 119,

228

Sexes, 147
Sin, 123
Slavery, 13
Social Ethics, 129
Social Interest, 43, 48,

89, 120, 228
Society, 53, no, 206,

226, 230
Socrates, 212
Spencer, 44, 206
Spinoza, 44, 69
Sport, 196

255

INDEX

State, 54, 83, 134, 162, Utilitarianism, 38

.

Sterilization, 148

Subconscious, 94
Superstition, 159

Toleration, 118
Training, 62,71, 93
Treitschke, 163
Truth, 108

Valuation of Goods, 36
Vivisection, 195
Voltaire, 182

War, in, 162
Welfare, 20, 23, 222
Westermarck, 43, 193

Uncertainty, 59 Whitehead, 49, 105, 108,

Uniformity, Law of, 59, 154, 202

103 Women, 147, 158

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